Halo: Angels of Death
by Ariane-072
Summary: Nate and his team technically don't exist. They were trained separately, and have been based on outer colonies the UNSC technically never colonized. They know nothing of the other Spartans, and the other Spartans know nothing of them. With one mistake by their higher-ups, their whole world will be turned upside down, and they will find allies in places they never expected...
1. Prologue

A shell casing fell, end over end, half a mile down a chute, to clatter to the floor at his feet. The Spartan paused momentarily to check above for enemies, then, finding nothing to kill, moved on.

This far underground, Nathaniel-007 was invisible to his enemies. The downside to that was that he was just as invisible to his allies, and if he was unfortunate enough to run into a problem, he would have to rely only upon himself to make it back to the surface alive. Possible issues to watch for ran through his mind, from undetected enemy movement to seismic activity or, worse, shaft collapse. Every side-shaft he passed, he checked. Every corner he came to, he took the time to take cover at, and then follow his weapon through, just in case an enemy contingent was concealed within.

This level of vigilance, while natural to him, was tiring. It was four days since he'd gotten so much as a wink of sleep. The only thing keeping him awake was the copious amounts of chemicals – from caffeine to wake-up stims – coursing through his body. Nate ignored the little tremors in his hands, sure in the knowledge that they would disappear with the adrenaline of battle, and until then, they were nothing more than a minor irritation.

More pressing was the burning in his legs. It was from four days of non-stop running. He was moving faster than a fast march, but not quite double time, using Spartan standards to define his speed. Using Marine standards, he knew he was off the scale. That kind of speed was not something even a Spartan could maintain forever. It was not unusual for Nate to spend days at a time at a fast march, but almost double time was unheard of.

The complete silence was driving him crazy. In his experience, silence was always followed by bad luck. If it was quiet enough for him to hear his own near-silent footsteps, something terrible was about to happen. Here, it was so quiet, the silence _swallowed_ his footsteps entirely. After days of such terrible, deafening silence, his nerves were on edge, to the point where he would have jumped at his own shadow, had he had one.

_Save your energy, Nate,_ he told himself, settling back to a fast march, then slowing to parade march. If his legs gave up on him now, he would be entirely unable to defend himself in the unlikely but possible event of an enemy discovering his presence.

A rumpled pile appeared in the tunnel ahead, barely visible even to Nate's sharp eyes and the advanced night vision system in his HUD. He switched to thermal vision, then blinked as the pile burned bright white, and finally, for the first time in four days, he stopped moving forward. Weapon trained on the warm _something_, he cautiously took a step, and then another step. He stopped again, unwilling to go any closer lest it be hostile.

"Identify yourself," he growled, voice rough from lack of use.

The pile moved, then morphed into a vaguely human shape. "Human. Tory! Lost. Help me?"

It was a child. Nate watched it look around in the darkness, trying to see who had spoken. It stood, or rather, tried to, and after much effort and a few squeaks of pain, managed to lean against the wall in what was the closest thing to a standing position it was capable of. Judging by its size, Nate thought it was around nine years old, and its voice was male.

_A boy. Civilian? Must be._ "How in the world did you get down here?"

"Fell."

"Down the shaft?" Nate heard the disbelief in his own voice. No normal human could _fall_ half a mile and survive. The physics involved were simply mind-blowing. At terminal velocity, for which a person only had to fall six hundred feet, the damage to the human body would be mortal. The lucky ones would die instantly. The unlucky would suffer for hours, but die anyway in the end.

"Yea."

"Bull. Not even a Spartan could survive _that_ fall unprotected. Doesn't matter. Let's get you topside." He had a mission. A very important mission. Nate frowned, dreading the penalty for ignoring his orders, but he had been trained to protect civilian lives, and these tunnels were not safe for anybody. Much less an injured civilian boy. The civilian was his priority.


	2. Ch 1

He moved at a steady, mind-numbing jog, still too far out from his objective to bother with stealth. His team fanned out behind him, each team member carefully watching their section of ground for any sign of the enemy.

"Tango, two o'clock," Nate said, and _then_ saw the target he was talking about. He switched from silenced pistol to silenced S2 sniper rifle and paused for a steady shot. The familiar _whump_ of the silenced rifle thudded through him, and the target fell, none the wiser.

"Nice shot," Raphael-100 commented casually. "Got to be nearly a mile."

Nate nodded and settled back to speed. Somehow, he had a natural affinity for the sniper rifle. He could hit a soda can dead center from two miles away on a windy day. Without a spotter, or a scope adjustment. He _could_ make the shot from the hip, but only one out of four tries – rifle level, it was closer to nineteen out of twenty. For some reason he had never experienced quite the same level of success with any other weapon. He was a crack shot with the S2 and better still with the S3, but no better a shot with any other weapon than any of his fellows. "There's a reason I'm a sniper, Raph."

"Tango at ten," Ezekiel-021 pointed out. "Extreme long range."

"I have him," Nate said, sighting the target through his scope before zooming in to place the crosshairs right over the Insurrectionist's center of mass. The range was too extreme to try for the headshot, much as Nate would have liked to. He pulled the trigger and kept watching. Just visible at this range was the tiny puff of pink mist as the projectile hit its target. A lung – not an instant kill but a kill all the same, and quick enough to disable the target that the element of surprise had not been lost. "Tango down."

"_Nice,_" Zeke enthused.

"All units begin standard stealth procedure," Nate ordered. The five members of his team responded with green acknowledgement lights. They took comm silence seriously, and for good reason. Zeke and Raph had almost been killed a few months back during a raid. The cause of the disaster had been a single breach of comm silence, which the Innies had managed to triangulate.

Moving carefully from cover to cover, often commando-crawling to cover the space, Nate and his team crossed ground slowly, but it sure as hell beat being seen and losing the element of surprise. Raph's acknowledgement light went yellow, and Nate froze, signaling the rest of the team to do the same. Less than a foot away, a four-man Insurrectionist patrol passed by, oblivious to the six Spartans concealed by nothing more than a light layer of snow and a large helping of total stillness.

Zeke signaled green and then yellow, framing a question. _Engage?_

Nate responded with decisive red. _No way in hell._ If the patrol did not check in, it would blow their cover. The Innies he had already killed were fringe snipers, and according to intelligence _they_ did not report unless they saw something.

Six Spartans waited, as still and silent as statues, until the Innies were well past. The wind whipped up flurries of snow, further obscuring Spartans and Innies alike, and finally Nate signaled to move out, opting for hand signals rather than acknowledgement lights. He led the slow but nearly invisible procession, then paused in cover, pointing at the fence twelve feet away and flashing his acknowledgement light yellow. _Too far._

All five of his Spartans nodded their understanding. Nate looked for another way forward, but there was no cover anywhere that was any closer to the objective than the copse in which he and his soldiers were concealed. Finally, he used hand signals again to communicate an order to move forward anyway. Under cover of the gathering storm, staying as low as possible, he slipped through the fence just ahead of his team, and then stood, a foot behind the guard posted at the nearest door.

All it took was a squeeze from a gauntleted hand and the guard fell to the snow, neck snapped, stone cold dead. Another guard on the other side of the door saw the six Spartans and reached for her comm to raise the alarm, but was rewarded with the same fate.

They were in.

Nate led the way, sticking to shadows where he could and motioning that his Spartans do the same. Not for the first time, he wished he had access to the same technology that allowed UNSC Prowlers to cloak themselves and thus become completely invisible. A little bit of av-cam would go a long way. What little time he and his team had spent fighting the Covenant indicated that Covenant Elites had better cloaking tech, and some were equipped with av-cam units small and effective enough for deployment of cloaked infantry. He was nearly sure Engineering had a few burnt-out examples of such tech, but _nearly sure_ and _totally sure_ were two completely different things.

Someone's dress shoes clacked against the floor. Nate saw a shadow pass across a well-lit section of the passageway and frantically signaled his team to take cover as best they could. He folded himself into a space that was surprisingly small, considering the size of him, and prayed that his Spartans had managed to find sufficient cover.

The footsteps drew nearer. Nate didn't dare look. The Innie paused only a few feet away, then _humph_ed and kept walking. The team let out the collective breath they had been holding. Cautiously, they waited, watching their motion trackers until the contact moved out of range and then listening intently as they waited for the enemy to move out of hearing range.

Nate checked his sensors again, and then carefully eased out of cover just enough to see whether there were other contacts that didn't show up on the motion trackers. There was nothing there, so he stood and motioned for his Spartans to follow.

As one cohesive unit, they ghosted through the compound, careful not to be seen or to make any sound. The silence was absolute and borderline unnerving, but the benefit of it was that Nate and his team could hear enemy contacts well before their motion trackers, or eyes, could see anything. Footsteps were the only sound, and gave a very good indication of where _not_ to be. Nate closed his eyes and concentrated on what he could hear. A faint buzzing told him the central heating was on, which was no surprise. He let his mind paint a picture of where everything was in relation to his team, and the schematic he had studied at length.

Nate opened his eyes to Cassiel-104's acknowledgement light blinking yellow twice, and then green once, and yellow again. Another question. _See anything?_

Red, then yellow. _No. Nothing. Yet._

Based on the schematic, the objective was likely to be in the middle of this facility. The room was heavily guarded and they would probably have to fight to gain entry. Nate had studied and studied the schematic and it simply was not possible to enter that room other than through the only door. He needed a decoy – and to hope that the guards were poorly trained – to be able to get in without a bloodbath. He and his Spartans were dreadfully outnumbered, outgunned, and only very lightly armored. He might be able to get in and out and keep _most_ of his team intact, but barging in all guns blazing was going to get someone killed.

The Spartan kept moving. It was dangerous to stay in one place for too long in a combat zone. He wanted to think free-fire, but it wasn't. Not until his team was discovered and the inherent threat became direct and imminent. Nate shrugged just enough for his brothers and sister to see, and counted himself lucky that he had Raph, Zeke, Cas, Eli and Lin at his back. There were no soldiers in the universe better suited to backing him up than the five he had worked with for the better part of the last thirty years.

Flicking his acknowledgement light yellow twice, he paused. _Eyes open._

Still on point, Nate crept forward inch by slow inch, paying careful attention to what his ears told him. Zeke and Cas moved carefully forward to stand at his flanks, and Raph, Eli and Lin took up the rear.

Yellow. Green. _All clear._ Green again, twice. _Keep moving._ Taking his own advice, the Spartan moved quickly but silently from cover to cover, crossing another well-lit stretch just short of a dead sprint before all but sliding to a stop in cover. Eli nearly ran into him, and Cas swore under his breath, barely enough for Nate to hear through their helmets and a couple of inches of air. He gave the all clear again, accompanying the acknowledgement light signal with a shrug. _Just being careful._

Progress was frustratingly slow and there were a number of close calls. Once, Nate had to reach out of cover and snap an enemy's neck to keep him from calling in a sighting of a roughly humanoid shadow where such a shadow should not have existed. _That_ was sloppy, and Nate was of a mind to reprimand Raphael for the mistake. It would have to wait, of course, so wait it did.

Eli signaled red, yellow, green. _That was too close._ Nate nodded in agreement, then glanced at Raph, who swiftly looked at the floor and then forward down the corridor again to signal his embarrassment and that he would do better. They moved on again after that, Nate still on point. All good leaders led from the front, not a protected position in the middle.

Time passed. Nate's eyes were too busy glancing around to make sure that he and his team weren't seen to know how _much_ time, but he guessed that the mission clock was probably around three hours by now, including the time taken to sneak in. That put it on approximately two hours inside the facility. It was too much time, but if he pressed on any faster he and his Spartans would begin making mistakes big enough to potentially cost them the mission.

_Progress report,_ he demanded of himself, then proceeded to give it. _Mission clock approximately three hours. My men and I have been inside the facility for some time, and progress is slow. Enemy traffic inside is heavier than expected, demanding that we spend much time in cover. Kill count is already higher than expected, all kills attributed to mission leader. Mission status green._ He paused. _For now._

Pushing aside all thoughts of reporting, Nate pressed himself up against a wall and proceeded sideways. The team followed before he had time to order them to, working with their leader in that communication-free way only a Spartan team could. When he stopped at a corner and consulted his motion tracker, Lin dropped to a prone position and commando-crawled forwards to peek cautiously around. Her light flashed yellow and then green, the signal for _all clear_.

Nate moved and then gave the _move out_ order. Typically it would have been met with five green acknowledgement lights but to send the signal took a moment's distraction so in tense situations the system was only used for orders and important questions. Anything else was hand and posture signals, which were more subtle and often more effective.

A length of totally clear hallway was ahead. Nate frowned, eyeing the guards posted at the door. That was the only way through. It and two more doors between this passage and the objective. Minimum carnage would require some skilled shooting with the silenced M6D sidearm at his hip. He flicked Eli's light to gain the other Spartan's attention, then put a nav marker above the guard he wanted to delegate to his other sharpshooter. He lifted one hand with three fingers raised. _On my mark._

Eli nodded. _Got it._

Nate counted down with his fingers, then pulled his fist downward. _MARK!_ Two _whup_s rang out within half a second of each other – Nate had it at an eighth – and two guards fell with neat holes drilled between their eyes. For the moment, that door was clear. Nate moved forwards, watching his motion tracker for any sign of targets on the other side. There was one. He pointed at himself. _Mine._

He moved slowly until he got close enough to the proximity-activated door for it to chime cheerfully, and then sprinted at it, slipping through the narrow gap just as the guard on the other side realized it was opening. Combat knife already drawn, Nate grabbed his target's shoulder with his free hand, and, from behind, slashed the knife across the Innie's neck. The target fell with a muffled gurgle.

An alarm sounded. Nate and Raph cursed violently in perfect unison, and all six took off at a flat out sprint towards the next door. Nate's ears told him that the nearest enemy contact was just far enough away that he and the team could get to the other side of the door and break the mechanism with just enough time to get to the objective before the Innies could break through.

"Screw comm silence," Nate muttered to himself, and then opened a closed channel to his team-mates. "You all know the plan for this eventuality. Get in as fast as possible and then get the hell out as fast as possible. Don't die in the meantime. Comm silence is worthless now, so swear at me all you like."

"Whose hare-brained plan was this anyway?" Lin joked. Nate smiled at her self-deprecating humor.

"Yours," Eli reminded her helpfully.

"Stow it," Nate ordered. This was no time for the usual battlefield banter. If they had the breath to tease each other, they weren't running fast enough. "Have you forgotten the meaning of haul ass?"

With that reaffirmation of his authority out of the way, Nathaniel kicked it up a gear, leaving his team in the dust. He was damn fast, even for a Spartan, and that coupled with his savant-like sniping ability made him an excellent scout and point-man. He _was_ careful to keep his speed reasonable, so his team could stay together, and soon Eli and Lin had caught up. Raph and Cas were not far behind, but they were still trailing, so Nate slowed up a little more and let them catch up.

Cassiel was audibly at his limits. His breathing was heavy and easily audible. Raph was a better runner, and had hung back to keep his assigned 'Rifle Brother' company. Now that the group was bunched again, Raphael took point, and Lin dropped back to let Nate draw level with the new point-man.

"Don't forget-," Nate began.

"-nobody left behind, yeah, I know," Raph finished for him. "You treat us like you're the only one with a clue, sometimes."

"It's my _job_ to make sure we all make it out of here in one piece. Perhaps I do my job a little too well, but wouldn't you rather that than lose a brother or sister?" Nate started backing off the speed a little bit. This next door, if they hit the proximity sensor too fast, would not open quickly enough for two Spartans running abreast to get through. In full MJOLNIR, that would have made little enough difference. Nate and Raph both had the mass to bash through even if it failed to open.

However, lightly armored as they were, they weighed significantly less, and therefore had less momentum – and there was also the small but significant factor of impact protection. This light stuff, little better than standard-issue Marine gear, was dreadful in comparison.

"Steady off," he ordered. "These doors don't like dead sprints."

A few more strides and the door chimed and began to open. Two more long, loping strides and he and Raph were through. The rest of the team piled through behind, and Nate hit a manual terminal to close the door.

"Get clear," Eli warned, placing small amounts of plastic explosives in critical parts of the door mechanism. "This will only be a little blast, but the shockwave's a bitch." He set the last charge, and then activated the timer in his HUD. Nate watched the numbers count down and was the last to bolt for minimum safe distance. Just as he reached it, the explosives blew. Another alarm went off.

"Run! Just run and keep running! It's not far now. If it shoots at you, shoot back. You don't have time to miss!" His voice was urgent but controlled as he issued the orders. It was more of a task to appear calm and in-control when he had to scramble to keep his footing – and failed to – as one boot struck a puddle of lubricant. Raph grabbed his shoulder and hauled him along until he could find his feet again.

Nate switched mid-stride from pistol to sniper rifle. He could hit with the S2 at any range barring so close the barrel was too long, and nothing ever _got_ that close. Eli did the same. That concerned Nate – skilled as Eli was, he did not possess the same uncanny talent for nearly always finding the right bearing regardless of scope, environment and weapon position. That was Nate's talent and Nate's alone.

The guards at the final door jumped into action as the six Spartans rounded the corner. Nate's rifle kicked and a guard fell before he had time to process the fact that he had to shoot. Eli was almost as fast, but missed, swore, and had to try again. Six incredibly skilled, highly-trained Spartans against ten incredibly skilled, highly-trained ex-UNSC rebels worked out to be a fair fight when the rebels' superior arms and armor were taken into account. Ordinarily it would have been a walk in the park. Nate wished for his MJOLNIR suit, and knew from their postures that his team wished the same.

He fell back and took cover around the corner. There was nothing between his team and the guards. No cover, not much in the way of armor, and as for weapons, they had pistols. Nate and Eli had sniper rifles, but they were awkward and unwieldy in such close quarters. Raph had a rocket launcher – useless – and Lin, Cas and Zeke all carried spare pistols as their secondary weapons.

Again, Nate's rifle kicked, and a guard fell, followed by two more shots and two more kills before he ducked all the way into cover to reload. The sniper popped out again ready to fell the last few guards. His rifle kicked, and something punched him hard in the shoulder an instant later. His entire right arm went limp, and his weapon fell to the floor, useless. He fell back to cover again to unholster his pistol, then rushed the last guard, firing as fast as the gun would pump out the projectiles – which was about half as fast as he was pulling the trigger.

The guard fell, and he leapt over the pile of bodies. The team followed, and Nate had to fend off questions from a very concerned Lin as he clicked the safety on and picked up the object they had been ordered to retrieve. It looked useless and valueless to him. No purpose whatsoever on a battlefield, and it didn't look like it could sell for enough money to be worth the cost of this mission.

"What is it?" Zeke wondered.

"Doesn't matter," Nate said, shoving it into the hardcase on his left thigh. "Let's get my rifle and get the hell outta Dodge."

"Already got it," Cas said, coming back through the door and slinging the S2 across his back. "You need treatment for that."

Nate glanced at his wounded shoulder and shrugged with the other one. "It's not so bad."

"You're impossible," Lin sighed.

"What happened to _fast_?" Eli reminded them. The hollow banging on the door they had disabled was getting more insistent… and Nate could clearly hear the door threatening to give way. He glanced at his team-mates and then bolted out the door and down a perpendicular hallway, the five other Spartans in tow.

"All right, boys and girl, listen up. If they catch up to us, we're dead. If there are any other security forces in this facility, and we come within range of their weapons, we're dead. If they follow us and catch up before evac arrives, we're even _more_ dead. There's no more time to waste."

"Sir!" five voices rang out in unison.

"Good, you all understand. I don't have to remind you to look after your Rifle Sibling – and no swapping this time, that's how Lin and Cas nearly got killed on our last mission. Each of you has one objective: _get your assigned partner out of here alive._ We all know where the evac point is, we all know how to get there, we _will_ have to split up. I'm relying on all of you to make sure your partner is safe."

"_Safe_," Raph scoffed. "What does any of us know about _safe_?"

"Perhaps not dead is a better way of putting it," Nate conceded, trying and failing to ignore the stab of pain in his shoulder. It threw him off his stride; he stumbled, and Eli had to grab him to keep him from falling flat on his face.

As he ran, he managed to push the pain from the forefront of his mind, but Nate still felt like someone had stabbed him and was now twisting and wiggling the knife. It hurt like hell.

"What in the…? Hey boss," Lin said from the front, "I have a _friendly_ contact!"

"Try to raise them, but don't stop running, and don't slow down."

"Aye aye, sir."

Nate ran almost blindly, following Eli more than leading the team or even paying any attention to the actual plan. He pushed back against the grey haze that played at the edges of his vision and pulled up TEAMBIO to check his own vitals. It took him a moment to find his own name and stats, and when he found what he was looking for, he swore.

"What is it?" Eli asked, all but dragging his leader now.

"Blood loss," Nate managed, battling now for consciousness. "_Shit_. Shoulders bleed almost as bad as heads do."

"All right. I have command. Just stay on your feet." Eli switched seamlessly from the second-in-command who took orders without question to the leader whose word was law. Nate smiled faintly. This was why he had chosen Eli. The other sniper could just as easily be a leader as a follower. Flexibility made for a very good Two.

His legs felt like some odd mix between lead and jelly. Nate forced one foot in front of the other for a few more strides, and then gave up, concentrating all his strength on staying conscious. Eli paused for what felt like an age but was really a second to swing Nathaniel over his shoulder, and then sprinted onwards. The bouncing made the pain in Nate's shoulder worse, and the blackness swallowed him.


	3. Ch 2

**AN: wasn't sure whether to end this chapter where I did, earlier, or later... as always reviews are welcome/encouraged, please help me develop and improve my writing style!**

* * *

Drifting in and out of consciousness, Nate was vaguely aware of the seventh member of his party. He had managed to pick up that it was a fellow Spartan, one he didn't even know existed, and the surprise had allowed him a few moments of total lucidity.

During that time, he had discovered that this stranger, this brother he hadn't even known existed, was called Jeod. It was an odd name, Nate reflected, but perhaps no stranger than any of the names of his team-mates. Faintly, he became aware of someone prodding at his shoulder. It hurt. He tried to tell them to piss off, but his body refused to respond.

"I think he's waking up," Lin said as if from a great distance. "He's more responsive than he has been. Brain waves are better, too. Hold him for me, please."

An unfamiliar pair of hands took his elbow and left shoulder in a very familiar type of grip. This was the vicelike grip of a Spartan. Nate's foggy mind slowly registered that this was probably Jeod. His first instinct was to fight against the stranger's hands, fight the confinement. It was unacceptable that he be restrained by someone he had never known existed.

"Watch him," Eli warned, sounding rather closer than Lin had. "Lots of brain activity. His heart rate and blood pressure are spiking, and I'm reading a lot of adrenaline in his system."

"Raph," Lin muttered, "give him another dose. We won't be able to hold him if he wakes up too much, and with all of us so close, we're screwed if he wakes up badly."

"Bad idea, Lin," Cassiel cut in. "I say let him go, let him wake up. He'll knock himself out again soon enough. We can give ourselves a bit of distance. Let him freak out if he's going to. He's had more than enough of that tranq today."

Nate felt sluggish. The discomfort in his shoulder morphed from pain into an odd tugging sensation. Slowly, his brain caught up to Cas's words. Tranq? Tranquillizer. It registered in Nate's mind that the tranq was probably the reason he felt so sluggish, and more than likely had a lot to do with how difficult consciousness seemed to be to maintain.

"He'll kill himself if he wakes up again," Lin disagreed. "He's lost too much blood. I need to get this wound cleaned, the bullet _out_, and would _one of you_ please go get some blood out of the fridge?!"

"What type is he again?" Eli wondered. "I forget."

"A, I think." Cas sounded unsure.

"No, he's O neg," Raph disagreed.

"Shut up, you idiots, he's obviously AB positive," Zeke asserted. Nate wanted to shake his head. He was _none_ of those.

"Ugh, just get O neg and be done with it! You can give O neg to anybody. Doesn't matter what blood type they are."

"You got him, Raphael? I'll get it." That voice was only familiar in that Nate had heard it introduce itself as Jeod.

"Yeah, I got him, and nobody calls me Raphael except my team-mates. It's Raph, or Spartan, or my number, to you."

"All right." There was a pause. Nate felt Jeod's presence leave, heard MJOLNIR-booted footsteps move towards the Pelican. There was a pause, filled with the sound of somebody rifling through the blood fridge. "Can't find any O neg. Isn't his blood type on file?"

"No, of course not," Lin grumbled. "What universe are you from, anyway? The more of our medical details people have easy access to, the more dangerous it is for us."

"The universe where the _less_ details a medic has access to, the _more_ likely he or she is to make a mistake," Jeod responded calmly. "I have a feeling that _this_ is the right bag."

"B? No way!" Zeke denied. Nate felt a strong urge to smile, but his body refused to respond. Jeod was right.

"I don't look at type," Jeod said. "I've never been wrong yet."

"Bring it here, then. We'll take the risk," Lin said with a frustrated sigh. "Since nobody _else_ can come up with anything useful."

The voices kept discussing him, but they gradually faded into a background hum. Nate fought towards his team, away from the dark corner of his mind that he never occupied when conscious, but he felt like he was swimming against a riptide. It was utterly impossible, and he was going backwards. He stopped fighting.

Lin felt her heart pause and then kick back into gear, beating at almost double its normal pace. Nate's vitals were dropping as more and more blood left his body. She heard Eli as if from a distance as he frantically yelled at the Pelican's pilot, and something about getting the damn thing's engines working again presently filtered its way through her concentration.

The readout across her HUD went amber and she heard two beeps in her ear. Raph swore – that was nothing unusual, he swore _all_ the time – and Cas yelled something about losing Nate. Lin frowned. That wasn't going to happen. Not on her watch.

Her hands worked almost of their own accord. Lin's heart leapt. This was what happened when her unconscious talents took hold. Her gift was, frustratingly, intermittent, but every now and then she managed to do what no other medic could. Twice in her life, she had brought back the dead. On several other occasions she had saved soldiers who would have died in any other medic's hands. More commonly, she was just another medical officer, no more and no less skilled than any other.

She watched as her hands worked. Her consciousness was entirely passive, feeling and seeing what she did. All she saw was Nate's mangled shoulder and her own hands – and the tools arranged on the edge of his chestplate.

Nate felt the current relent. He didn't have to fight his way back, instead taking his time to enjoy what he knew would be a brief break in the madness that was his life as a Spartan. For now, he didn't have to fight.

He found his way back to the place where he could hear everything, but not see or move, and recognized the chemical tang of the tranquillizer that stopped him from fully reconnecting with his body. It wasn't an anesthetic – that, he knew, would have knocked him out completely – and for that he was grateful. At least a tranq would wear off quickly and he would be functioning at his impressive best within minutes of regaining control of his body. Anesthetic lingered for days.

The blood loss was more of a concern. He could feel how it made his thoughts slightly sluggish, and knew it would weaken him. Something pricked the back of his hand, and moments later he felt his strength gradually rise. The tranquillizer diluted and allowed him a little more control.

"He's back," Eli noted. Something beeped and Nate heard Eli's fingers tap a panel. "Let Cas know when you're done, and Raph will give Nate the reversing agent."

"Brain waves?" Lin inquired.

"Normal. He's fully awake, fully lucid."

_Yeah,_ Nate thought, _and it hurts like hell._ A big part of him cared little about the pain, but a smaller, more insistent part wondered when he would get control of his body back, so he could punch Lin out. He squashed the urge. Lin's deft fingers worked quickly, and within minutes, he could feel the pinching and tugging of the needle and thread as she stitched him up. That only took a few seconds, and then the only pain was a dull ache.

"Done. Raph?"

"On it."

Something slid through Nate's skin, into the crook of his elbow. It was accompanied by a pinching kind of pain, and a second later, it retreated. The pain lingered a moment, then disappeared. Ten seconds went by, and the restriction of the chemicals lifted.

He sat up. "Ouch."

Lin giggled, something she only did in moments of acute relief. "I'm not surprised. I don't know how much function you'll have in that arm for now… you'll heal, always do, but the bullet severed a rather important nerve. I reconnected it, but it has to heal."

Nate shrugged with both shoulders and tested how much he could move his fingers. It turned out, not much. "Well, I can't shoot with it. Zeke, go help the pilot. If we can't get this bird back in the sky, we're walking home."

"Sir!" Zeke confirmed, then disappeared behind the Pelican.

"So, Jeod, do you know anything about engines…?"

Jeod, who had removed his helmet, smiled ruefully. "Some, but only enough for field repairs on Warthogs and Mongooses. I couldn't get the Pelican operational again."

"Lucky it's me and not Zeke," Nate said. "I'm no tech either – I don't know how much you saw back there, but I'm a sniper. Lin's our medic, Raph's heavy weapons and explosives, Eli's stealth – but he has sniper's training as well – Zeke's tech and hacking… and Cas is the resident maniac."

"Hey!" Cas protested. "Close quarters combat, thank you _very_ much."

"I don't know," Jeod commented. "I don't see much of a difference. Maniac, hand-to-hand, same thing really. Who's automatic weapons?"

"Everyone," Lin said. "I explained how stealth was important on that last mission? That's why we all had pistols, and every weapon was silenced except Raph's launcher. We usually have one or two with shotguns, Nate and Eli have DMRs or sniper rifles, Raph with something heavy, and whoever's left over has a pistol… plus everyone has an assault rifle or SMG, and a knife."

"Hey, Cas, Raph?" Zeke called from behind the Pelican.

"Yeah?" the two replied in unison.

"Can you guys get some stuff from the troop bay? Thunder has a list."

Cas and Raph looked to Nate for direction. He shrugged. "Go. The sooner we're back in the air, the sooner we get out of here, and the less likely it is that the rebels will track us."

"Nate," Eli said, "you know it's never that easy. We have incoming!"

Nate unholstered his pistol, uncomfortable with the feel of the weapon in his left hand, and referred to his motion tracker. Eli was right. "Eli, Lin, form up on me. Jeod… I don't know if I can order you around."

"You can. I'm only a CPO."

Nate nodded. "Good. Same order for you. I want everyone watching everyone else's six. We have to keep them off the guys working on the Pelican. Cas, Raph, you're pack mules _and _close-up defense."

"Sir, yes sir!" six voices rang out. Eli, Lin and Jeod fell into position. Nate leveled his pistol, watched his motion tracker, and waited.


	4. Ch 3

**AN: short one, sorry, wanted to get it out of the way so Nate can heal his shoulder and we can get this party started. Next chapter might be a bit fluffy, no guarantees of continued quality ever! My muse is a fickle beast. Reviews are welcome, faves and follows too. I own the storyline and characters but nothing else.**

* * *

"Too many," Eli panted, dodging another rocket. "_Damn_, man, how'd they know to arm themselves for Spartans?"

"Who else kills by breaking necks?" Lin asked. "Who else is strong enough to?"

Jeod grunted. "They saw me. Stealth was not a command directive, to be fair. I was not warned there would be other Spartans inside."

Nate said nothing, emptying his clip into enemies' heads. Twelve shots, eleven dead enemies – at this range he was shocked to note he'd missed one. He reloaded one-handed and finished that one off, then kept shooting.

An explosion blossomed in the forest, felling several trees. Two fell onto the enemy, and Raph let out a satisfied laugh, letting off another rocket as he did so. It streaked past Nate's head, missing by just under a foot. Too close of a margin for comfort, but it was Raph's rocket, so he just shrugged. Raph could thread a needle with that launcher.

"Damn it!" Cas slapped a rocket to deflect it away from the damaged Pelican and its repair crew. It detonated against a tree trunk, felling the tree and blasting splinters in every direction. "Can you guys concentrate on the rocketeers? We're sitting ducks here!"

"You heard him," Nate said. "Take out those rockets. The Pelican is vulnerable at the moment, and it's our only way home." As he gave the order, he emptied another clip. As engagements went, this would be quick but bloody, with each Spartan taking out enemies at an impressive rate.

Eli grunted and blood started seeping from a hole in his armor, but he was quick to assert that he was fine. "Just a flesh wound."

"There has to be some better cover around here somewhere," Lin muttered to herself, forgetting her comm mike was on. "At this rate, we'll all be in Medical for weeks."

"Don't be such a downer," Raph suggested, his manic grin evident in his voice as he let off another rocket. "This is fun."

"Shit, I said that out loud?"

"Just kill 'em faster and you'll have nothing to worry about."

"Enough," Nate cut in, silencing the banter. As comforting as it was to know his team was functioning as normal – a very impressive state – they were professionals and knew better. This lightly armored, it was possible for the rebels to hear every word they said. The helmets were not soundproofed and not sealed. Too much chatter would shatter the illusion that Spartans were soulless killing machines, and with so few of them, Nate knew they _needed_ the psychological advantage.

Gradually, the attacking forces dropped away, and Nate was satisfied to hear the rebel leaders give the order for a full regroup. In a momentary lapse of discipline, he followed for a few strides, firing as he went.

"Permission to pursue?" Raph requested.

"Denied," Nate said, regaining his professionalism. "Zeke, sitrep?"

"Situation normal. Pelican India-422 still grounded, but repairs are progressing well. Pilot callsign Thunder took a minor hit to the hip, which will require medical attention, but is still functioning as normal. ETA on a return to the air is two hours, sir."

"Thank you, Zeke. As you were. Lin, tend to the injured. Raph, Cas, continue with previous directive. Jeod, commence standard surveillance pattern. Eli… let Lin treat your injury, and report to me for further orders when she is done."

All six acknowledgement lights blinked green, and the various Spartans set about their duties. Nate watched them work, paying close attention to the most subtle of each Spartan's mannerisms. Watching his team gave him far more accurate insights into their state of mind than talking to them. The set of Eli's shoulders indicated irritation, and was mirrored in Lin's posture because the former was a difficult patient and the latter got frustrated easily. Cas and Raph clearly found their task as pack mules demeaning – a "milk run" if ever there was one – and Zeke was thoroughly enjoying getting elbow deep in grease and parts.

"I see, now," Jeod commented, using the team comms to speak privately with Nate despite the fifty yards between them.

"Hmm?"

"Your team dynamic. When they told me _you_ were the leader, I didn't believe them. Eli fills the role with such confidence and ease that when I first laid eyes on you six, I thought he was it. What I see now is that he is a natural leader, but you are a stronger personality and generally over-ride him." Jeod's voice was even and frustratingly sure. "The rest are equals, as willing to lead their fellows as they are to follow. Cas and Raph feel their talents would be better put to use doing something more difficult, but won't complain because you are the leader and it is not their place to question orders."

Nate laughed once. "They're right, but we have no non-essential personnel, and someone has to help. You were trained to read tells?"

"My training and yours appears to have been much the same, barring a few minor differences. It seems your first instinct is to be secretive about most any detail that might reveal a weakness. Just as well you have a medic on the team, or you would be vulnerable to mistakes through lack of detail."

"If we were trained the same, why weren't we trained in the same _place,_ by the same people?" The question had run through Nate's mind several times, but it had taken until now for him to give in to curiosity and actually ask it.

"I can't answer that, though I don't believe it would have been possible for such similar training to have been done by different people. I would guess that the head DI, at the very least, was the same."

"Mendez?" Nate wondered, unconsciously cocking his head to one side.

"Mendez," Jeod confirmed. "Hard-assed, wasn't he?"

"Much as it sucked at the time, I can't complain," Nate said, shrugging. "Made us what we are. We got used to it fast. In the end we got so good at stealth, they gave up on the 'us versus them' format and split the team in half for war games. When _those_ started going on for weeks at a time with no clear winner, they gave up on training us altogether and called us Spartans."

"Sounds about right. Hey – contact, singular. Reads as unknown."

Nate snapped back to the cold professional he always was in times of potential danger. "Where?"

"Your two o'clock, right on the edge of your motion tracker's range. I wonder if you guys came up with the same signals…?"

"Concentrate." The sniper double checked that his pistol carried a full clip and used acknowledgement light signals to assemble his team. Green, red, yellow, green. _No alarm. Possible snag. Be wary. On me._

"What is it?" Cas asked.

"Unknown contact, two o'clock. Only one of them, but we know nothing about this one, so it pays to be cautious." Nate moved carefully forwards, towards the grey dot in his motion tracker, and his team naturally fanned into an arrowhead formation behind him. He saw movement in the trees, something skirting around the edge of the clearing. It was vaguely humanoid, but inhuman enough to be of concern. With the whatever-it-was went the little grey dot.

"It's big, whatever it is," Raph noted calmly. "If it's hostile, it's a rocket job."

"Maintain visual contact," Nate ordered. "We can't have it coming from us from behind. Watch your field of fire, make sure you have _no_ allies within it."

"Sir!" Eli confirmed, speaking for the rest of the team as he so often did.

Nate kept his eyes locked on the unknown for a long, tense minute, and then it simply vanished from both his field of vision and his motion tracker. "Lost contact. Does anybody have eyes on?"

"Negative," a chorus of voices responded. Lin added, "I think it teleported."

"Teleported," Cas scoffed. "Since when is _that_ possible?"

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," Zeke commented. His body language, while subtle, was nonetheless confused, though he controlled his voice well. "I think it was a native creature. The closest thing I can find in these files is an advanced simian, very similar in proportion to humans and sentient, though only approximately as intelligent as a three to four year old human. It has a prehensile tail, and a remarkable gift for tapping into the natural resources of this planet… and, most interestingly, some degree of psychic ability. There is an annotation in this file-."

"Let me guess, it hasn't been studied in-depth?" Cas mocked him.

"May I finish?" Zeke was remarkably calm, and refused to fall for Cassiel's taunts. "There is an annotation in this file stating that every subject studied has been shy, non-confrontational, and displayed exceptional talent for stealth. A footnote explains that every subject has simply vanished from extreme high-security, fully sealed confinement, usually within the space of five to six days."

"So it's not a threat?" That was all Nate was interested in.

"Most likely not. Based on this file, I would say that these creatures are naturally terrified of humans, and prefer to simply vanish when cornered."

"'_Most likely'_?" Lin was still tense and it reflected in her voice. "That doesn't rule out the possibility. And if it _is_ a threat, I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of something that can _teleport_ being my enemy."

"Most likely is good enough for me," Nate said. "Coming from Zeke, it's as good as a guarantee."


	5. Ch 4

Nate stood at the head of the line of six, waiting with increasing impatience. It was unlike General Anderson to be this late to a debriefing. To his left, Eli struggled not to fidget, and Cas kept shifting his weight from foot to foot.

All six paused in response to a noise half-heard. Nate listened, and a moment later, heard Anderson's distinctive footsteps hurrying towards the debriefing room. The hitch in the General's stride was more pronounced than usual, indicating great stress and possibly some pain, and the weight of his steps indicated suppressed anger.

"Brace yourselves," he said. "This might be interesting."

The sound of Anderson shouting made its way through the walls, but was muffled, and Nate could not determine a word of it. He thought he heard 'Jeod' followed by a number, but he couldn't be sure. The footsteps continued, rougher and heavier than before, and a lighter set hurried to keep up.

The lighter set of footsteps broke off down a side passage, and General Anderson continued on, gradually getting closer until they stopped just outside the door. The door chimed, and slid open. The rest of Nate's team snapped smart salutes.

"Sir!" all six yelled by way of greeting.

"You'll forgive me," Nate added, "for not saluting, sir."

"At ease, soldiers. I'll not ask of you what you cannot deliver, Spartan."

Nate bowed his head to acknowledge and thank the General.

"I will be recording this debrief for the sake of training and records," Anderson said. "Please state your rank, name and number for the tape."

"Lieutenant Commander Nathaniel-007." Nate kept his voice carefully even, subtly indicating his Spartans should do the same.

"Lieutenant Elias-002." Eli 'accidentally' bumped Lin's shoulder, trying to dispel her nerves. Lin had never been good at staying calm during tense debriefs.

"Medical Officer Linriel-014," Lin said, barely managing to keep her voice level.

"Senior Chief Petty Officer Cassiel-104," Cas proclaimed.

"Master Chief Petty Officer Raphael-100."

"Chief Petty Officer Ezekiel-021."

There was a pause, filled mainly with Lin's and Anderson's tension. Nate waited for the first question.

"Lieutenant Commander, please describe the mission in detail, beginning with the mission brief and planning phase, and ending when Pelican dropship India-422 docked with _Nova_-class destroyer _UNSC Devastation_. Leave nothing out."

Nate started talking at 0830:22 and, as per standard procedure, went over every single detail of every single second of the mission briefing, despite the fact that he had already done so before beginning the planning phase. It took thirty minutes to cover the briefing alone, and a further thirty for planning. He paused at 0945:46, swallowed, cleared his throat, and glanced around for water, of which he saw none, so he continued detailing what had happened.

He was a concise, clinical speaker, but the sheer amount of detail required made it impossible for him to cut his report down to a reasonable length. As he spoke, Nate watched the General's expression for any sign of boredom or irritation. Contrary to the Spartan's expectation, Anderson listened with rapt attention, soaking in every snippet of information.

"And so," Nate finished, "my team and I responded to what was a rather difficult situation the best we were able." His sense of time told him it was 1112:58 and a quick glance at the clock on the desk confirmed that. He would have elaborated on the reasons behind a few decisions, but his voice was becoming raspy, and it hurt to swallow. He _never_ spent that much time talking.

Anderson turned to Lin. "Medical Officer, fill me in on what happened while the Lieutenant Commander was unconscious."

Nate felt a stab of sympathy for Lin. She controlled her expression and body language well, and to the General she appeared calm. Nate and the rest of the team knew she was terrified.

"General, as I was focused wholly on my patient, I can only provide details of my work and his condition during that time. The Lieutenant will have to fill you in on the rest."

"That will be fine, Spartan."

Lin straightened a little – her 'tell' that she was unable to handle the stress – and took a moment to order her thoughts. "My patient lost consciousness from pain and blood loss. It was utterly impossible to give him any medical attention under the circumstances…"

Nate zoned out, only listening with the vague part of his consciousness that would tell him when he had to pay attention again. Lin could ramble, and it was best to leave her to organize her own thoughts and lay everything – no matter how irrelevant – on the table. The larger part of his mind occupied itself by wondering about Jeod.

If one other Spartan existed, then surely there were more. He wondered how many, and how the UNSC had managed to keep both factions completely separate for so long. There were few files that Nate lacked the clearance level to access easily, and those few, Zeke could hack into without too much opposition, partially thanks to the tech's AI partner. Between the two, they had read _everything_ pertaining to the Spartan project, or so he thought until meeting Jeod. How others could exist escaped him. Nate was a curious soul, and thus, he wanted answers.

For once, Lin was concise, and her report took less than two minutes. Eli took over without being asked, and _his_ report was far more time-consuming, covering the time from the moment he took command to the moment he relinquished it, and every detail therein.

Finally, Eli paused, cleared his throat, and sighed. "That's everything."

"Do you have orders for us, sir?" Nate asked the customary question, and expected nothing.

"You will forget you ever met another Spartan. Such knowledge is sensitive. I warn you to say nothing of this to anybody. The penalty for such a transgression would be most severe. The other has received the same warning."

"Sir, yes, sir!"

"Dismissed."

Nate nodded, and his team snapped a final, smart salute, before filing out of the debriefing room.

"What now?" Eli asked.

"We all report to Medical for standard post-combat examinations, and go from there."

Lin shrugged. "I don't see the point of that, to be honest. I've already given everyone a good going-over. All I have to do is submit a report…"

"No offense, Lin, but they want _unbiased_ reports," Raph reminded her, outwardly casual. Nate's especially sharp ears picked up on a very subtle note of actual intent. That was a first. Raph wasn't that stupid.

"Well _excuse_ me," Lin bridled. "I am just as capable of writing an objective report on a soldier's medical condition as any other medic. The fact that you are my brothers changes nothing."

"Bullshit."

"Stow it. Both of you." Nate was in no mood for the usual friendly teasing, and this had gone beyond friendly to somewhere between jokingly serious and actually offensive. Lin's work was her sole purpose in life, and she did not respond well to criticism. Raph knew that just as well as anyone else, and it was unacceptable that he would choose Lin's medicine to tease her about. "Raphael, you will report to me in the barracks when we're all done in Medical. Lin, keep a better handle on yourself. You are both professionals. Act like it."

Lengthening his stride, Nate stalked ahead, putting a little distance between himself and his team. It was unprofessional of him, but hell, they didn't need his guidance. They knew procedure inside and out. Eli would probably take command anyway just to take some of the burden off his shoulders. The unspoken agreement was that when Nate was in a bad mood, Eli was boss.

"Let him go, Eli," Cas said quietly, trying not to let Nate hear.

"Cas, keep your opinions to yourself," Eli admonished, automatically slipping into the role of leader.

"Really, let him go. He's almost at breaking point, I assume because the General took away the only thing he can do to occupy himself until that nerve heals. Best to leave him be to cool off for a while."

"I'll keep an eye on him so he doesn't break anything," Lin volunteered, trying not to laugh. Nate knew she was remembering the last time he'd taken a few hours off. He was normally very good at keeping his temper in check, and therefore didn't snap very often, but when he did it scared the hell out of any normal humans close by. The story did the rounds every other night, and Nate had come to realize that it really was hilarious.

He brushed past a Marine who was in a hurry, but who broke stride and turned to stare at the eight-foot-tall ball of tension anyway.

"Whoa," the Marine said to the five other Spartans. "What's up with him?"

"Long story," Lin said. "You don't have time."

Nate sat and waited. He felt useless, and that sat badly with him. He had been trained to always be doing something, and on top of all that, he was just the kind of person who hated not being able to do something he wanted to do.

Right then, what he wanted most was to head out to the firing range and murder a few targets. Nate had always dealt with his temper by taking it out on inanimate objects. As long as he could remember, he had kept a determined stranglehold on his temper, and then, when he lost it, he had done some damage to something that couldn't feel pain or hit back.

He could feel Lin's eyes on his back, and his keen hearing picked up that she was stressed. Her breathing was a little fast and shallow, and her left foot tapped out a rhythm on the floor. She answered another medic's questions in a flat, emotionless voice.

Immediately, Nate felt guilty. He was the source of her stress, and that was wrong. He had to battle against the natural instinct to turn guilt into anger, but that was a battle he won, and that, at least, was something he _could_ do. His left hand curled into a fist, and his right hand tried to but only managed to get half way.

"Cas," Lin said.

Cassiel came over and leaned on the wall, watching Nate like they were about to start sparring. Intellectually, Nate knew it would be an extremely stupid idea to lose control of his temper with Cas so close. Nobody could even come close to the close-quarters expert when it came to hand-to-hand. If he moved, Cas would put him on his ass before he could blink, and probably paralyze him with an arm-lock for good measure. A more animal part of him wanted the fight. He pushed it down, shoving the fury into a box with it.

The medic whose name Nate hadn't bothered to commit to memory came back. Nate stared through her, hoping she would leave his shoulder alone, but no such luck. His hands balled into fists again and his breath sucked in of its own accord. He paid no attention to what she said, too distracted by the fact that every time she touched his shoulder it felt like she was stabbing him.

Cas said something about being careful, and the medic cheerfully replied that most shoulder injury patients reacted like that. Nate just concentrated on a chip in the paint on the far wall to the exclusion of all else. The exact shape and size of that chip would be committed to his memory for a long time, but it was preferable to remember every detail about a flaw in a wall when he considered the other option.

The medic retreated and with her went the pain. Nate let out a frustrated sigh and watched the tiny woman rummage through a cabinet for something.

"Don't bother," Lin said. "He won't take them."

"That shoulder must hurt like hell. Who in their right mind refuses painkillers for _that_?"

"Nate does. We can block out pain almost completely if we have to, and painkillers – especially strong ones – seem to dull that ability. Don't bother telling him how long his shoulder will take to heal, either. I've already done that, and _my_ estimates are based on Spartan healing patterns. Being told it will take longer will only annoy him."

"So will being talked about like I'm not here," Nate cut in. "You have a question about me, ask _me_. You have something to tell me, tell _me_, not my team's medic."

"No, I think that's everything," the medic told him, in her irritatingly cheerful voice. "You can go whenever you want."

"Good," he grunted, standing up as he spoke. "Don't forget to remind Raph I want to talk to him when his exam is over."

"He knows," Lin said.

"I know. I also know he will want to avoid me if he can, because he knows I'm frustrated at this," Nate gestured at his injured shoulder, "and he knows he got into forbidden territory earlier, teasing you, so he knows I'm irritated with him as well. Eli's a good Two, but he's too soft with Raph. If he wants to go soft on me, remind him that the order still stands."

"Sir."

Nate struggled back into the form-fitting black t-shirt that made up the top half of Spartan fatigues, containing his frustration. It should have been the easiest thing in the world to put his damn shirt on, but with a broken shoulder and damaged nerve, it managed to be almost impossible. Finally, he got his head and arms through the right holes, and, more frustrated than before, he then had to wait while the nameless medic fitted and tied a sling to ensure the bones knitted properly.

"Oh – Lin," he said when the medic finally left him alone.

"Sir?"

"I'll be in the firing range, when Raph comes looking for me."

"Sir."

* * *

**AN: I did intend to get more healing time out of the way in this one but it didn't feel right to continue it from where I ended up finishing it. Also, "the order" will be explained in more detail later, once Nate gets over being pissed off at the world. If you haven't already figured it out, Raph can be a bit of a loose cannon... and probably wouldn't pass a psych eval if he was ever ordered to have one, but then, neither would any other member of my team of misfits.**

**Excuse any grammar/spelling/continuity errors, my brain is having trouble wrapping itself around the fact that Cas is close quarters and Zeke is tech... and these guys are all fairly new characters so I'm thus far horrible at remembering their numbers.**

**As always, reviews are welcome. Please help me improve my writing! I own the characters and storyline but nothing else. I'm happy to take suggestions for possible cameos. I can only imagine John's reaction to the guys... and we can't have Nate follow orders on this one, he just HAS to pursue knowledge!**


	6. Ch 5

_BANG_.

The modified M6D bucked in Nate's hand, and yet another hole appeared in the target.

_BANG._

It wasn't working. He waited for the sense of satisfaction, but it never came. Every single shot was right where he had placed it – head, heart, both knees, hands, a hole in each of the cardboard target's 'lungs', and several concentrated on the approximate location of each 'kidney'. Still, there was no satisfaction to be had in torturing and murdering cardboard.

_BANG._

In fact, killing at all was no help. Nate's vivid imagination could turn the targets into real live Innies, so in theory, he should have been enjoying the opportunity to let himself lose control. He wasn't, not really. What little enjoyment he got out of the feel of the weapon in his hand was hollow, and did nothing to vent his frustration. He grunted and kept shooting.

_BANG. BANG. BANG-BANG._

There were many words Nate could have used to describe himself at that moment. Frustrated was one. Dangerous was not, but clearly he was perceived as such. A burly ODST came in, took one look at him, and left.

_BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG. BANG._

Nate dropped the now-empty clip and reloaded. He was so used to reloading with one hand that it was no challenge at all – after all, he'd been fully trained to use dual weapons of many different kinds, from pistols to SMGs, and with a weapon in each hand it sometimes took skill to reload one or both.

_BANG._

"Put it down, boss," Raph said from behind the observation screen.

_BANG._ "I need to keep my eye in."

"You're venting. Unsuccessfully."

_BANG._ "No, I'm not," Nate denied, a fraction too quickly.

"Yes, you are. Are you going to yell at me, or am I standing here and waiting for you to exhaust yourself?"

_BANG._ "I'm not" – deep breath – "going to yell. I _am_ going to make sure you remember your discipline and professionalism. That was out of line."

"Yes, sir. I apologize."

Instead of murdering the target in another creative way, Nate took another deep breath, clicked the safety on, holstered his weapon, and turned around to face his wayward team-mate. "You know the consequences of causing discord within the team. I've explained this to you a thousand times. I'll skip the lecture because by now you know it better than I do. Why do you keep doing it?"

"I plead temporary insanity, sir." To his credit, Raph managed to keep a straight face.

"If you're going to go with that defense, you'll have to drop the temporary part," Nathaniel informed his subordinate. "You know what will happen if I order a psych eval. Don't make me go that far. You can scrub the Spartan barracks top to bottom. By the time I head back there tonight, I want to be able to see my face in every surface. You may have no help, no chemicals, and no special scrubbers, just a cloth and good old-fashioned elbow grease. If it's not done… you know what I'll do."

"Yessir!"

"Dismissed. Hop to it, soldier!" Nate sighed and shook his head, watching Raph bolt from the room like a bat out of hell. That one was a real problem and was going to get someone killed one day. Not for the first time, the Lieutenant Commander wondered why he still hadn't ordered that psych eval. It would rid him of one loose cannon.

He handed the heavily-modded pistol to the quartermaster on his way out and briefly considered what else he might do to try to rid himself of the feeling of uselessness. Quickly deciding to try to sweat it out, he headed in the direction of the gym.

Nate heard Cassiel coming a long way off. By the time the bigger Spartan caught up, his team leader was well prepared to see him.

"Where are we going and whose body am I disposing of?" Cas asked by way of a greeting.

"To the gym, and Raph's." Nate was in no mood for joking.

"Can I help with the murder?" Cas was determined. "How do you plan on killing him? My personal favorite is a massive dose of potassium. Stops the heart and breaks down in the body incredibly quickly. They'll never suspect a thing."

"I thought I'd beat him to death and be done with it. I could say we ran into some Covies and a Brute pulped him," Nate replied. He had decided it was better to play along. It usually was, with Cas.

"You, beat Raph to death? I mean, I'm sure you could do it, but he'd get a few good hits in first, and then where would you be? Just as pissed, just as injured, and with no good excuse to murder anyone else. Naw, I still recommend poisoning him in his sleep."

"Only if I don't work him to death first," Nate said with a laugh. "I have him cleaning the barracks. I want them spotless, and he only has a rag and water."

"You're sadistic," Cas said, grinning now.

"If I was sadistic I would get Lin to knock him out, then dump him out in the wilds with no clothes, no food, no water, no weapons, and no map. Just like Mendez used to do. Except the no clothes part. That's my own evil take on it."

"This time of year? Harsh. Not precisely undeserved, the number of times he's done this before, but _ouch_."

Nate snorted. "Maybe if he freezes his balls off, he'll behave a little better."

Cassiel, who didn't laugh easily, started with a snigger, then burst out in a very loud, very deep belly laugh. Nate controlled himself for a few seconds longer, then joined in, aiming a playful shove at his team-mate. Cas responded in kind and by the time they reached the gym both were laughing so hard they could barely walk.

"Care to share the joke?" a Marine asked.

Nate looked at Cas, and Cas looked at Nate, and at once, they both said, "I can't remember it," and started sniggering again.

"Better?" Cas asked once both of them managed to sober up.

"Better," Nate agreed. "I still don't know why I bother with Raph."

"There isn't a better heavy weapons and explosives specialist in all the UNSC. A bit of insanity comes with the territory, and you and I both know what a lot of concussions will do to a guy."

"He definitely wasn't always crazy."

"Oh, no, he was always crazy," Cas disagreed. "You just never noticed because we're _all_ a little bit mental."

"Speak for yourself," Nate shot back, clouting Cas on the shoulder. He wasn't quite quick enough to dodge the playful shove Cas aimed back at him. "Ouch – shoulder."

"Way to ruin the mood," Lin commented as she walked through the door. "You boys should know the barracks isn't as disastrous as you thought. I was just there. Someone cleaned up while we were away, so Raph just has to dust for half an hour and then he's done."

"No he's not," Nate said. "I told him I want to see my face in _everything_ by tonight. You know how literally he takes his orders."

Lin rolled her eyes. "Boys. Zeke's looking for you, by the way. Something about parallel highways."

Nate froze as the words clicked into place in his mind. Parallel highways had to mean information highways, in which case Zeke was talking about files a blanket search would not pick up. "Answers."

"That's what Zeke thinks. I didn't understand anything else he said." Lin sighed. "I'm a medic, not a tech. When I left to come here, he was muttering to himself about firewalls… I got that one, and his AI tried to explain some of the rest, so I bailed."

Nate wondered what his priorities should have been. Being that he had been given a direct order to forget about Jeod, his duties most likely should have come first. By the time he decided Anderson could shove the order in a very painful place, his feet had carried him out of the gym.

"Thanks, Lin," he called over his shoulder. The Spartan broke into a fast jog, ignoring the stabbing pain in his injured right shoulder that intensified and faded in time with his strides. The sling was getting in the way but he knew a loose arm would jolt the shoulder more, so he left it alone.

* * *

**AN: bit of a fluff chapter this one, but an insight into Nate's mind, and coping mechanisms. It's very unusual for him to turn to Cas, or in fact any other human being, to vent... but Cas is good at knowing what Nate needs, and is too determined for his own good. Yep I know it's not really that funny, what they end up laughing about, but these guys are all slightly insane, remember?**

**Review please! Characters/storyline are mine, Halo is obviously not.**


	7. Ch 6

"So as you see here, there are thirty-three others, though many of them are already missing in action," Zeke finished explaining. "Wow. How'd they hide that many Spartans from us for so many years?"

"Parallel streams," Nate said, only half-understanding what the tech meant with all his jargon. What he _did_ know, he had pretty much figured out for himself, with limited help from Zeke and his AI friend.

"Parallel streams, five heavy firewalls, a search blocker, and some kind of system isolation protocol that-," the AI began.

"I'll stop you there," Nate interrupted. "You lost me at isolation protocol."

"It's rude to interrupt," the AI said with a huff.

"It doesn't matter," Zeke comforted her. "He doesn't understand much of the technical, and you know I already know, so there's really no point. Nate's nearly as technically illiterate as Lin."

"That one," the disembodied voice said in an uppity tone. "She was _rude_."

"So," Nate said loudly, refusing to get annoyed at the AI's criticism of his team, "what are we going to do about this information?"

"What do you mean? Nothing. There's nothing we _can_ do," Zeke said, but as he spoke his brow creased into a frown. "There'll be trouble if they find out I accessed these files."

"Ugh," Nate grumbled, newly frustrated. "There has to be something. It's their fault we even ran into Jeod and asked the question. Angel Team was on a mission. From what Jeod said, _he_ was also on a mission. It was inevitable we would detect him, and it's our training to contact any unexpected friendlies."

"We're not supposed to know about him. A beaurocratic mistake? Of course they try to cover it up, and of course there will be consequences most severe for any of us who follow the matter farther."

"And apparently there have already been consequences 'most severe' for whoever gave the order to send Jeod in there. General Anderson was not impressed with someone. Did you hear him?"

"I did indeed. I'm glad I'm not that Marine, whoever he is. Way to shoot the messenger."

Nate shrugged, and heard footsteps outside in the hall. By the weight and cadence of them, this was a tech, and therefore not somebody he wanted knowing what he was up to. "Someone's coming, a techie I think."

The door chimed and opened, and the tech walked through them, walking with great purpose over to a terminal in one of the corners of the room.

"I've already repaired your light armor," Zeke said, gesturing towards it with his head. "That was a simple enough task, but you're lucky you weren't hit in a more critical area. The shoulder is far too close to the helmet and chest systems and it would have been a difficult and complicated repair had there been any damage to either area."

"How's the diagnostic of my MJOLNIR going? I thought it would have been finished by now."

"It is. Your suit requires some routine maintenance and a few minor repairs. The shield generators were severely overloaded on our last combat mission and are operating at less than fifty percent normal capacity. Unfortunately the parts we need to replace them are not kept on this ship, and to repair is a complicated task. I am partway through the repair process."

"I hope you prioritized and repaired the suits most badly damaged in that engagement first."

"I did. Yours is the last. Leader you might be, Nate, but my priority is always the soldier without an operational battlesuit."

"Good. I have… something to do, I'm sure. Your priority is to get us back to full battle-ready status. I need not remind you the _Devastation_ is a destroyer, and we may be required to go into battle at any moment." Nate was speaking in codes, now – complicated, subtle code that could be interpreted any number of ways depending on situation and context. What he _really_ meant…

"I will have Cynisca keep working on Task B, sir, and report her findings to you at regular intervals. I shall concentrate solely on the task of repairing and maintaining the team's MJOLNIR and light ANVIL suits." Zeke understood the message – Nate had been speaking in codes like this one for the better part of thirty years. He rarely said what he actually meant.

Nate nodded his approval and turned to leave.

"Sir?"

"Yes?" he said without turning back to face Zeke.

"I have a message for you on my datapad, from the General. It is not a sensitive matter, sir. Shall I read it out?"

"Yes."

"He writes, 'report to the bridge for orders immediately, Spartan. Come alone. Leave Sierra-002 to command Angel Team in your absence.' …I don't understand, sir, absence?"

Nate shrugged. "I don't understand either. The team goes nowhere without me, I go nowhere without my team. That's how it has been for so many years. Get a message to Eli, let him know he's temporarily in charge… and come with me."

"Sir? You would be directly disobeying an order from a superior officer by bringing me along."

"I don't care. Nobody, and I mean _nobody_, breaks up my team."

"Yes, sir."

_-LATER-_

"I don't know about this, boss," Zeke said nervously. Nate ignored him and kept walking towards the bridge. Orders were orders… until they were _insane_, and then Nate would stand up for himself and his team. There was a lot he would do at the word of a superior, but breaking up the team was not going to happen.

A few Marines leapt aside – Privates and Corporals, mostly – and saluted as the two Spartans passed. Those high enough in rank to be considered equal or above in the command structure nodded or even waved respectful greetings. Nate was used to this, the awe and respect the Spartans commanded among the bulk of the ranks.

Helljumpers were a different story. Nate felt a stab of irritation when he saw a group of three of them approaching from the bridge, body language aggressive. He outranked all three, the highest barely a Lieutenant, yet there was no respect from any of them.

"What happened, wrench it?" the shortest jeered.

"Yeah, bet he was just lifting fifty and threw it out," the highest-ranked joined in.

Nate grabbed the instigator by the collar and threw him up against a wall, holding him two feet off the floor. "You will show some respect to your superiors, or I will show you what pain _really_ is."

"Lieutenant Commander," Zeke said, emphasizing Nate's rank, "shouldn't we be going? The General is waiting for us."

Nate dropped the ODST and continued on towards the bridge. Helljumpers were irritating, but of no threat. His momentary loss of control was inexcusable. "You're right, Lieutenant. We're already late. I can deal with _them_ later."

As soon as the Helljumpers were out of earshot, Zeke told his AI partner to submit a report and request a court-martial for insubordination. It was a little bit of a stretch to charge the Helljumpers with something usually reserved for direct disobedience, but would send the message that Spartans were not to be messed with. "What was that for?"

"To prove Spartans have teeth," Nate lied. "That kind of disrespect towards a superior officer is unacceptable. They can whisper all they like but when they start with that bullshit I _will_ take action."

"Sir, you _do_ realize you are disobeying a direct order – a _greater_ sign of disrespect – and still taking offense to what was a relatively minor jibe?"

"That's different," Nate said with a patient sigh. "The General has said he will not ask what I cannot give. Splitting up the team is too much to ask. I would assassinate the Governor at the word of a superior officer, but I refuse to jeopardize my team by allowing us to be split up. United, we are unstoppable. Separated… things don't get done, brothers and sisters don't have someone at their backs at all times, and good soldiers are put at unacceptable risk."

"Practice for talking to the General?" Zeke wondered out loud.

"Partly," Nate said with a short, humorless laugh. "This is the first time I've been summoned for orders and told not to bring a team-mate or five. It simply isn't done, and that worries me. I want someone I trust at my back on this one."

"Still don't know why you didn't choose someone else. Cas is better close-in. Eli's a better shot, _and_ he can disappear at a moment's notice."

"Give yourself some credit, Zeke. You're solid. Reliable. Someone has to lead in my stead, so Eli's not an option, and Cas can be inconsistent. Raph's an idiot with that damned rocket launcher, and Lin's not as good in a fight as the rest of us." Nate led the way into the bridge, nodding to acknowledge the members of the crew who stood and saluted him. He outranked most of them – typically the bridge crew were lieutenants – but was first to acknowledge that their skill sets were all impressive.

His combat boots clunked against the floor, making far too much noise. Nate forced his face to remain blank. No matter how badly he wanted to frown at the volume of each step, he was a Spartan, a professional, and his face had to reflect that, especially in the presence of superiors.

"General, sir!" he came to a stop and stood at attention, frustrated that he was unable to salute as protocol and courtesy dictated. "Lieutenant Commander Nathaniel-007 reporting as ordered, sir!"

Anderson turned. "I told you to come alone, soldier."

"Yes, sir. That is impossible, sir."

"Explain."

"Sir, we are a team. We work only _as_ a team. Our complimentary skill-sets and nearly thirty years of learning to operate seamlessly as a team have ensured we are highly capable and hyper-lethal, but the same factors have made us vulnerable when working alone. It is simply impossible for any of us to perform effectively without at least one team-mate upon whom we can rely in any situation." Nate noted with unease that the General had neglected to give him the 'at ease' order.

"You are aware that in this, you have disobeyed a direct order."

"Yes, sir." _Uh-oh. That was stupid, Nate,_ he thought.

"You are aware that ordinarily, such actions would have unpleasant consequences."

"Yes, sir." Nate wondered what the meaning of 'ordinarily' was – not on the surface, but underneath. Anderson spoke simply, but what was left unsaid was of more importance than what was said.

"Today is your lucky day. Well do I know that the single worst punishment a Spartan can suffer is that of boredom, and it seems you have already inflicted that upon yourself. At ease."

Nate let his shoulders relax a little, just enough that the normal humans could see. Zeke, standing behind and to his left, dropped his salute.

"Your orders today are simple. Relinquish command of your team to Lieutenant Elias-002 for the time of your healing plus one week for your disobedience. Relinquish command of Ezekiel for that same period of time – he is to rejoin the team – and return to ONI Sword Base on Reach. You will do as medical personnel advise, _to the letter_. A detail omitted is not an excuse to do as you wish. You will also submit to a full psychiatric evaluation and will answer all questions fully and honestly."

_Like hell I will._ "Yes, sir. Zeke, you heard the General."

"The _Devastation_ will drop out of slipspace briefly, and you will take a Pelican to the surface of Reach. That Pelican will remain at Sword Base until such a time as you are permitted to return to your team."

"Yes, sir."

"Do you understand your orders?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you have any questions?"

Nate carefully kept his face blank and his voice level. He was quietly furious, but refused to let it show. "No, sir."

"ETA at Epsilon Eridani system is forty-eight hours, fifteen minutes. You have until then to gather any personal possessions and say your goodbyes."

"Yes, sir."

"Dismissed."

"Thank you, sir." Nate turned and forced his shoulders to stay relaxed. He saw Zeke snap a final salute and felt and heard his team-mate fall into step at his heels a second later. As he walked, he seethed. How _dare_ anybody split up the team? It simply wasn't done.

_-LATER-_

"I can't _believe_ this! We've all been injured before, and they've _never_ used it as an excuse to split us up," Nate muttered furiously to himself, still tense. He was in the gym, alone by virtue of the dangerous energy emanating off him and the team's refusal to acknowledge that he was leaving. In his left hand was a weight bar loaded with nearly three hundred pounds of lead weights. He counted in his head, alternating between bicep curls and lifts that worked every muscle in his shoulder as well as several large back muscles, twenty reps each. Five cycles was standard, and he was nearing the end of the fifth.

A Marine walked in, paused, and then kept coming. Nate was surprised. Most Marines kept their distance out of awe and terror, more so when Nate or a member of his team was tense or frustrated. Nate grunted a greeting, but otherwise ignored the man.

_Eighteen, nineteen, twenty._ He put the weight back on the floor and walked to the far end, long strides carrying him towards a high-tech punching bag labeled 'SPARTANS ONLY'. These punched back, hard and fast enough to prove challenging to a Spartan. The punching bag interfaced with his neural lace, confirmed his identity, and then asked him which type of workout he would like.

"Heavy assault," he said aloud, hoping that for once the voice recognition program would work. These bags took so much punishment, it was a bit of a crapshoot.

"Heavy assault, roger," the bag proclaimed, and started punching.

Nate ducked and weaved, avoiding every attempt at a blow. He knew this workout almost better than the system itself, and as a result he was able to move a fraction of a second before the punching bag threw its punches. All he had to do was land two punches hefty enough to knock a Spartan out, and the workout would finish, but that was much easier said than done. It was designed to put the Spartan on the back foot.

"_Whoa,_" the Marine commented, huffing in time as he ran on a treadmill. "You're one tough SOB, man. I ain't ever seen a Spartan injured before, but I ain't ever seen anyone else keep right on training."

Nate puffed out a laugh, enjoying the simplicity of the physical workout. He didn't have to think about this, or even concentrate, with how easily he predicted every move the machine made. "A Spartan who can't push through injury is no Spartan at all. It's _this_ that makes us so tough… not our super speed, or strength, or a clever enough brain to rival an AI. I met a Marine once, who was Spartan in all but name. It's something anyone can aspire to."

"Ever thought of getting into motivational speaking?" the Marine asked. The steps on the treadmill stopped. Nate didn't look away from his punching bag, hitting it with a quick jab. This was much more difficult working one-handed.

"I'm a team leader. I motivate for a living." The bag landed a hit just below his right kidney, but with his core engaged and braced in anticipation, Nate didn't even puff out his breath. It would bruise impressively, but no more. He dodged a heavy right hook, then landed a left of equal power. The bag beeped, acknowledging the hit, and swung around wildly on its hook. Nate had to concentrate for a few seconds, and missed what the Marine said in reply.

"I'm sorry, what?" he asked, breathing hard and starting to sweat now. "I can only really concentrate on one thing at a time."

"I said, I'd probably be dead by now if I tried that. Can't bicep curl three hundred, either. I can bench it and more, but _damn._ One hand."

Nate laughed. "I'm a Spartan. There are no Marines who can match us physically, but like I said, it's all in the attitude. You normal humans can be almost as hard to kill as we are, if you have the right attitude." The punching bag landed another hit, this one to his left shoulder and heavy enough to leave the arm numb for a moment. Nate backed off until it recovered, and then went back in swinging. He took two more relatively light hits, one to a hip and the other to his right elbow, but landed a strong uppercut. The bag jolted upwards, then fell off its hook. It beeped and stopped moving.

"Knockout!" it proclaimed.

Nate stood there, breathing deep and fast, for a long second, and then simply picked up the punching bag and lifted it back onto its hook. "It landed four. Come on, Nate, you can do better than that."

"You," the Marine said, staring at him in awe, "are incredible. How do you cool off?"

"I run, normally, but obviously I can't do that today. This," he tilted his head at his injured shoulder, "is broken, and it won't heal properly if I run too much. It was a risk to work on the bag. I probably won't do it again for a couple of weeks."

"Just needed to let it out, huh? I don't blame you. I noticed you were tense when I came in, and you guys are always so _controlled_, man - that ain't good for a guy. I mean, I saw what you did to that Helljumper, but I'da done the same. Probably more. Well, I don't think I coulda lifted him with one hand, but I'da had a good go at him with my fists."

Nate barked a humorless laugh. "Believe me, it was tempting. I know they whisper and spread lies, and I don't care about that, but to directly disrespect a superior officer is crossing the line."

"You can't just leave it at that, surely?"

"Oh, he'll be court-martialed. I refuse to do anything that could get _me_ in trouble when he was the one in the wrong." Nate was feeling unusually friendly towards this brave Marine. He normally grunted a few syllables at them and then ignored them, but this one had something about him. "Say, Corporal Taylor, wouldn't mind doing me a favor?"

"Sure, uhh…"

"Nate."

"Nate. But what could _I_ possibly do for _you_? And how do you know my name?"

Nate laughed. "I can read your tags from here. Super-sharp eyes, see. Better even than other Spartans. And you can fetch my weapons for me, from the quartermaster, if it's not too much trouble… I'm not popular down there at the moment. I _might_ have smashed the quartermaster's own sniping record."

"I sure can, but why do you need them?"

"I'm going to Reach for a while. My talents are required at one of the ONI bases planetside," Nate explained. It was stretching the truth a little bit, but it would do. "You'll need to ask for Lieutenant Commander Sierra-007's weapons, otherwise he won't have a clue what you're after. You'll probably find me here… stretching or something."

"I'll be right back!" the Marine said with a huge grin. Taylor was an enthusiastic creature, Nate thought. Young and brave, and promising so long as he could shoot well and keep his head down.

Nate's comm link buzzed in his ear, the warning a polite person would give before speaking into someone's ear. He waited.

"Lieutenant Commander, I see you have taken young Corporal Taylor under your wing," General Anderson observed.

"Yes, sir."

"Good, good. Would you like a pet while you're on Reach?"

"A… pet, sir?" Nate was not sure what the General was asking, but he suspected, given the context, that it had something to do with Taylor.

"Indeed, Spartan. Think of him as a project. Taylor wishes to specialize as a sniper… and we currently lack a marksmanship trainer thanks to a little accident last week."

It was something to do. Nate thought for a moment, and then shrugged. "If that is the case, sir, I accept – though I suspect I had no choice to begin with."

"You have all the choice in the world," Anderson denied. Nate detected a lie, and smiled to himself. This was a test.

"Yes, sir. I have already sent him on his first errand. With me he will learn the true value of hard work, as well as all the skills he will need as a sniper."

"Yes… I am aware the quartermaster is not especially enamored of you at present. That record was long-standing and _was_ considered very impressive."

"Yes, sir," Nate said, not sure how else to respond. People confused him often, and the General, while a brilliant tactician and career soldier, was too _civilian_. Civilians in particular were completely befuddling.

"Carry on, Spartan. Anderson out."

* * *

**AN: wait what's this? The team, split up? A pet Marine for Nate? That psych eval might throw a spanner in the works, but Taylor should provide some entertainment during healing/punishment time.**

**I promise there will be another mission/some more battle soon... I'll try to cover healing time/training Taylor in one or two chapters only, but they might be long chapters, and will be moody. Nate's a grumpy bastard when he feels useless.**

**As always, please review! I can't improve if I don't know what I'm messing up. Characters/storyline are mine, Halo is not.**


	8. Ch 7

He was _bored_. It was an uncomfortable feeling, and set him on edge. Nate never had time to get bored.

At least Taylor was proving to be an enthusiastic student. Nothing irritated Nate more than having to teach someone who refused to learn, but Taylor was very much living up to the 'pet' description. Nate worked the young Marine hard, and had yet to hear a complaint.

Unfortunately, Taylor could only learn effectively for so much time in one day, and Nate was careful not to burn his student out. It left a lot of hours of absolutely nothing to do, so the Spartan spent a lot of time either reading or maintaining his weapons.

"Sir," Taylor greeted him, yawning widely. Nate frowned.

"Am I asking too much of you, boy?"

"No, sir! Not at all! It's late, sir."

Nate glanced at the clock. It _was_ late for the young Marine – nearly midnight, in fact. The Spartan shrugged. "As long as you're ready to go at 0600… I don't want to have to lecture you about punctuality, soldier."

"You won't, sir! I'll go to sleep right now, sir!"

"Carry on, then, Corporal. Hit the lights on your way past the switch – I can read in the dark just fine." Nate went back to his book, an actual physical paper copy of George Orwell's _1984_. The book itself was an odd one, but it suited Nate just fine. Reading was, for him, something he enjoyed as an escapist pastime. Just for a few hours, he could forget about the killing and the violence. For now, he used it to forget about how _useless_ he felt.

The Spartan quickly slipped into a meditative state, thoroughly losing himself in the world his mind painted based on the words on the pages in front of him. It was a vivid world, a dark dystopia the likes of which he could easily imagine but had yet to actually see. It was all too easy, he thought, for authority to turn into tyranny, and while the rebellion in the _real_ world had to be put down, it was worth considering why somebody had bothered to start it in the first place.

His mind began to wander. Nate understood little of what motivated people as a whole. The things that motivated his Spartans seemed unimportant to the masses, and the one thing he could understand – personal gain – seemed too petty a motivation for such a large movement to base itself off.

The size of the rebellion, he decided, was due to the all-too-human tendency to look for someone to follow. Only the strongest leaders could break free of that temptation, and such folk tended to garner a large following. Clearly, some natural leader somewhere had decided the system had failed them, and had started to gather followers.

It was a snowball effect. One little flake – the leader, the first – could begin to gather other flakes and as it rolled down a slope grow larger, and with its greater surface area, pick up flakes at a greater rate. Nate considered the phenomenon and eventually realized that personal gain was not such a petty motivation after all. It was what had motivated him – and his brothers and sister – in the early days of training, when they had been forced to earn every meal, every night in a bed, by dint of hard work and success.

Book long forgotten, he sat and remembered. They had started with a larger group – nearly sixty, in fact – and it had remained large for quite some time. There had been limited time for bonding outside of the arbitrary 'teams' that had formed in the beginning, and Nate had always been a loner, so what time was not spent on training was spent trying to escape the constant companionship of the barracks.

It was augmentation that had culled the ranks to just six. The files he had read, of the thirty-three in the other group, indicated that _their_ augmentations had been less dangerous, though they had still lost many. Nate was amazed that any of his own Spartans had survived, with the high-risk specializations that had been built into each of them. He wasn't sure exactly what had been done to each of his siblings, but each had come out of augmentation with a special in-built talent they had not had beforehand.

Nate's eyes, super-sharp and able to see just as well in low light conditions as in daylight with very short adjustment time, were the main change to _him_, though his hearing was also super-keen and he could all but echo-locate if he concentrated. The almost magnetic pull he felt while using a sniper rifle had always been present, but had somehow intensified to the point where he never missed – though his training dictated he was cautious about especially difficult shots.

The story was the same with the others. The few who had survived had come out of augmentation as highly specialized, hyper-lethal young adults at the very young age of just thirteen. That was twenty-three years ago, now, by which point Nate and his team had already been a 'team' for seven years and worked like a well-oiled machine. Training had gotten more serious, with the instructors given orders to shoot to kill, and Nate, by then, had given the order to only kill if absolutely necessary. With the disadvantage of trying to avoid killing their instructors, his team had still performed admirably… though they _had_ killed four instructors by the time they had all turned fourteen, out of sheer necessity.

Nate looked back on the years from age fourteen to sixteen – and the subsequent first operational deployment – with some degree of nostalgia. He had considered it a game, a challenge, to try to outwit the only people who could match him for skill and tenacity, and it was fun. The team split into two teams of three, with Nate leading one and Eli the other, they had spent hours, days, and weeks at a time playing war games, often ending on orders from a superior with no clear winner.

The last war-game had continued for a full month, and finished with an epic standoff on a hilltop. That standoff had ended, Nate recalled with a smile, with every single one of them 'dead'. No winners, just losers all-round. They were finally good enough that they could finish each other off – so good that the final battle had lasted for two days and two nights before each got the upper hand over the others and they all 'killed' one another.

He recalled a series of calculations and codes, and the exact numbers within them, from the very first combat mission. Nate and Eli had run reconnaissance, Eli's stealth skills proving useful in gaining intelligence from close-in, and then all six had spent two hours discussing, calculating, and decoding, until the plan was agreed upon by all. What had followed was a campaign made all the more difficult by the fact that the Spartans had very limited ammunition, and the Insurrectionists warehouses full of it. The first real challenge, which of course Nate and his Spartans had risen to, and-.

_"Lieutenant Commander Sierra-007 to the briefing room immediately."_

Nate jumped at the unexpected sound, and then shook his head. A quick glance at the wall clock confirmed it was morning – or rather, morning enough for anybody reasonable to be awake – but still an hour before he was due to meet Corporal Taylor on the firing range. He left a quick note on Taylor's datapad warning the young Marine that he might be late, and then scooped his sidearm off its table, loaded and holstered it, and set off at a fast jog.

He could function on as little as two hours of sleep in as many days, and because he had so little to do, he was sleeping four to six hours every single night. One night with none would do him no harm. With that thought, he shook off the last of his distraction, and closed his eyes, concentrating on the picture his ears gave him. Each footstep echoed off the walls, and his vivid imagination turned the sound into an internal map. He could clearly pinpoint his own location as well as the locations of others based on his and their footsteps in relation to those walls, that map.

This early in the morning, only a few people were awake, and Nate figured they were probably outside of his range of hearing. He knew Sword Base inside and out, so well that he could easily sketch a detailed map showing every room and corridor of every level, including the levels he was not supposed to be able to access.

Impatient, he leapt up stairs several at a time. The lift would take too long, and he was always uncomfortable in such contraptions anyhow. Nate went up two flights, then took a hard left, passed through two cross-corridors, turned right at a third, and then ducked through a door to his right.

He saluted, then opened his eyes. "Sir!"

"At ease."

Nate dropped the salute and waited.

"General Anderson and the _Devastation_ will be returning for you and your protégé today. You have specific orders from higher up in ONI which I will detail in a moment – firstly I must ensure you understand that this ONI directive must take priority over any order from the General, however must not interfere with your duties onboard the _Devastation_ or combating the Insurrection."

"I understand, sir," Nate confirmed. He understood ONI people well enough – they _always_ wanted to hear the words, not just 'yes' or 'no'.

"Good. Your orders come from Section Three. You are to document, in as much detail as possible, every minute you spend in the General's company, paying specific attention to _his_ words, actions, and demeanor."

The Spartan was not sure he liked this, but orders were orders. "Yes, sir. May I ask for what purpose this information will be used?"

"General Anderson is under investigation after ONI intercepted suspicious communiqués from his personal terminal to an unknown person believed to be of interest to an ongoing investigation, the details of which you are not cleared to know. ONI cannot assign an operative to his crew, for he is a shrewd man and will know to be suspicious… however _you_ happen to be of his choosing, and therefore trusted. You may attempt to glean information, but you must be cautious. If he discovers your interest, he will no doubt suspect the truth."

"And my orders come from NavSpecWep? Section Three does espionage, now?"

"No, lad, _your_ orders are from Section Three because of the technicalities involved. As well you know, the SPARTAN-II project was a Section Three initiative, therefore you belong in the Section Three command structure, and your orders must come from within said same structure. The order originates from the Director herself."

_Of course, you idiot,_ Nate berated himself. "Yes, sir. Was there anything else, sir?"

"I must stress that your orders are _top secret_. Speak of this to nobody. Not even your team can know. And… I must issue you with _this_." The ONI officer held out a datachip. Nate eyed it suspiciously, but took it after a moment's pause.

"What is it, sir?"

"You mean _who_, Spartan. That is Andromeda, UNSC AI serial number ADM-6242-A. In the event you are unable to fully document your observations in secret, Andromeda will do so for you."

The Spartan watched the chip, allowing his suspicion to show on his face.

The ONI officer actually laughed. "She won't _eat_ you, son! You may only leave once you have inserted the chip into one of the ports at the base of your skull."

Nate reassumed a blank expression, but internally, he sighed. _Might as well do as he says. Here goes nothing._

An ice-cold liquid presence made itself – _her_self – known as soon as the chip was in place. Nate blinked twice, the only sign of his discomfort that he would allow to show on his face, and the chill faded.

_"Hmm. Yes. I like it. You, then, are the one called Nate? I have been looking forward to meeting you."_ Andromeda was 'talkative' inside his mind. It was a strange feeling… not altogether unpleasant but not _pleasant_ either. _"When shall I have the opportunity to explore the capabilities of your MJOLNIR and ANVIL suits? I do hope I have a chance to familiarize myself with your systems before the start of our mission."_

"How long before I give her back?" Nate muttered under his breath, too low for the normal human to hear. Aloud, he said, "Was that all, sir?"

"Yes. You are dismissed. Andromeda will inform you when the _Devastation_ is in-system; you will have half an hour from then to gather your personal effects and load them into the Pelican you rode in on."

"Yes, sir!" Nate snapped a final salute, then turned on his heels and marched out the door.

_"I heard that, you know,_" Andromeda told him. _"You don't give me back. I am a new issue, yours for my entire operational lifespan or until you fall in combat, whichever is first. I look forward to working with you."_

"Wonderful," Nate groaned, little more than a whisper. "I hate AIs."

* * *

**AN: Another surprise! Poor Nate. Oh - he doesn't get lost in thought like that often, normally if he's reading he can concentrate on his book or the file or whatever [and I'm actually presently reading ****_1984_**** which is why I was so specific with which book he has]. Sword Base, for some reason, totally kills his concentration. I did intend to spend a little bit of time on Taylor's training but oh well... might develop him some later.**

**I'm basing ONI's structure off what little I know about the CIA [from spy shows lol] so there's one big Director, then the Section heads and their various underlings. Nate deals with underlings. It may not be accurate to the canon [idk], I'm not sure if they even went into the structure of the Office, but I like it. At this stage, though, I'm still happy to tweak things.**

**Please review! Characters/storyline are mine, Halo is not.**


	9. Ch 8

"Sir, can my training continue on the _Devastation_?"

Nate shrugged. "If I have time. If I don't, I'll see if the quartermaster's forgiven me yet… he's a damn good sniper, and a better teacher than I am."

"I really would rather learn from you," Taylor said. "I mean, you're a Spartan, how many people can say they were trained by a _Spartan_?"

It was cute, this hero-worship the young Marine had going on, but it was irritating sometimes. Nate shrugged again and ignored the lad, still surprised that the intimidation factor of the faceless armor hadn't scared him off. Most Marines were friendly enough with unarmored Spartans, but tended to keep their distance from anybody wearing full MJOLNIR.

"I was right," Andromeda said, using his comm systems to speak to him out loud. She sounded almost smug. "The Corporal is so focused on the rumors, he doesn't even see what's standing in front of him. It's curious… it's almost as if he sees what suits him. Truthfully, he is fearless not because he is brave, but because he simply does not see the reasons he should be afraid."

Nate grunted a sound of agreement. "And between him and you, I'm not going to have a spare second. Hey, Taylor, you didn't tie this one down well enough." The Spartan undid the knot in question and tied a different kind, one that would not come undone accidentally under any circumstance but which was easy to undo on purpose no matter how badly over-tightened it ended up.

"Sorry, sir! I'm not great with knots."

"I noticed." Nate heard MJOLNIR-clad footsteps on the landing pad behind him and turned to face the other Spartan. He realized with surprise that it was Jeod, and ran a finger across his faceplate in the Spartan smile.

Jeod returned it, body language friendly as ever. "My brothers, come forward."

Three other Spartans seemed to materialize from the long shadows that midday cast across the launch pad. Nate was tempted to take a step back, but held his ground, unsure what to think of the situation.

"You know my name, but I should introduce myself properly. I am Petty Officer First Class Jeod-048, and my team, Corey, Brent and Leo. My superiors don't know you exist, and I expect General Anderson is most displeased to have us, because _you_ aren't supposed to know about _us_, the same way your existence has been kept secret for so many years."

"Holy _crap_," Taylor whispered in awe. _"Five_ in one place?"

"Soon to be ten," Nate reminded the Marine. To Jeod, he said, "I take it you didn't listen either, when they told you to forget about my team?"

Jeod lifted one shoulder. "There is one significant difference between your superiors and mine, brother. _My_ superiors know it is futile to deny knowledge to a Spartan with an AI. They warned me not to share my knowledge, but I was told I was permitted to pursue more."

Nate shrugged outright, deciding to use normal human body language for Taylor's benefit. A pause followed, filled with the comfortable silence Nate had come to associate with easy missions. Nate was, true to form, the one who broke it. "Raph will _not_ be pleased. As far as he's concerned, it's just as well we're a different group entirely. It means we don't have to share our space with other teams."

"Ah, yes, that one," Jeod said cheerfully. "The explosives expert, right? I noticed he was a little crazy."

"You haven't seen anything." Nate re-tied another knot that Taylor had done a poor job of, and then sat on the floor at the back of the Pelican. The other four Spartans piled in, followed by a shell-shocked Corporal Taylor.

Jeod pressed the intercom button. "Punch it."

"Aye aye. Hang on, boys, this'll be a wild ride. Got some nasty turbulence today!"

_"I hope you packed puke bags,"_ Andromeda commented gleefully. _"Taylor already looks about ready to blow chunks. He's terrified!"_

"Be nice," Nate muttered to the AI. He removed his helmet and put a hand on Taylor's shoulder. "You're fine, lad. These birds can take a lot of punishment. Rough air's nothing to worry about."

"Yes, sir," Taylor said, though he didn't sound convinced.

"Just strap yourself in, you'll be fine," Jeod said in an eerily soothing voice. "Thunder's a good pilot."

_-LATER-_

Nate stepped out of the Pelican into the _Devastation_'s main hangar and was immediately greeted by an enthusiastic Eli. "Great to have you back, boss!"

"Let me guess," Nate laughed, "Raph? Nah, I'm joking, I missed you guys too."

Zeke kept glancing from Nate to Jeod's team and back again. "How did _that_ happen?"

"My best guess is they needed transport from Reach, and the higher-ups decided that since the _Devastation_ was already scheduled to be in the area, they might as well not waste resources. We technically don't exist, remember. The only people who know we exist are Section Three, and the people on this ship… and, I suppose, some other ONI folks from Sword Base." Nate glanced at a very green Corporal Taylor and used hand signals to order Lin to make sure he was all right. He needn't have bothered; she was already on her way over to the young Marine.

"That makes sense. Anderson can't tell them no. He might be a General, but if the order came from someone even higher… say an Admiral…"

"Exactly, and the Admiralty has been getting more involved lately." Nate started towards the officers' mess, hungry because he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. His team fell into step behind him. Nate was the only one of the six in armor, which instantly denoted him as the one who had just returned from a mission. Four more sets of obviously Spartan footsteps followed a respectful distance behind.

"So they're all NCOs, right?" Eli asked.

"Yep. Their leader – Jeod, actually – is only a POFC. Far as I'm aware they won't be allowed in the officers' mess." Nate shrugged. "The only reason you guys are – Eli aside – is that you're always with me."

"Someone should show them the way to the soldiers' mess," Lin commented.

"Nah, they'll find it," Cas disagreed. "Won't take them long. They're Spartans, same as us, and I don't remember ever being _shown_ where anything is."

Zeke's datapad beeped. "Boss, I got a message from Anderson for you. He wants all of us to report, fully armored, for a mission brief, tomorrow at 0700."

"Forward it to my datapad so I can review it later, and come with me to the tech lab," Nate paused. "There's someone you should meet. Actually – all of you should come. Jeod and his team _excepted_."

"Still don't trust them?" Eli asked as the four relative strangers dropped back.

"We've met Jeod _twice_, including today, and he never so much as mentioned his team. I don't know if I _can_, yet."

"Fair enough."

Nate paid no attention to the Marines and Helljumpers he and his team walked past, until one Helljumper blanched and pressed himself up against a wall. At that, Nate let out a soft laugh. That particular idiot wouldn't go around insulting Spartans again.

"Not going to give us any clues?" Raph was just about bouncing. For the millionth time, Nate thought he was a loose cannon, just waiting for an excuse to cause havoc.

"Definitely not if you're going to act like a two-year-old," he said, only half-joking.

_"Why all the secrecy?"_ Andromeda wondered. _"You could always just tell them…"_

Nate ignored his new partner, carefully listening for Jeod's team until he heard them break off down a side passage. "Good – they're gone. We're most likely sharing the barracks with them, so I hope you guys kept the place tidy while I was away. Nothing sensitive left where anyone can find it… you know the drill."

"I did," Lin said. "The boys made it hard, but you'll be impressed. It's spotless. Anderson said we're only making a short jump, so we're all out of cryo, the better to avoid freezer burn. I'm sure glad of that. It would be the tenth time this month…"

"You've been jumping a lot?" Nate wondered.

"Yeah," Cas said. "We've been real busy, boss. Innies're going mad in this part of the galaxy. I overheard a couple of Marines talking about it, apparently the media's got hold of the story it's been that bad."

"Well, I'm glad I'm back, then. I can't have you guys stealing all the glory." Nate paused at the door to Engineering, waiting for it to confirm his identity and open. A moment later, it chimed, and admitted the six Spartans.

"All right already, we're going mad!" Raph started fidgeting. Nate depolarized his faceplate and shot the explosives expert a sharp look. Raph stopped fidgeting and stood meekly.

"Before you get to meet her, I have to ask you to contain your surprise. Andromeda's not exactly who you guys will expect. If I see any reactions from you big enough for a normal human to see, I will make your lives miserable for the rest of time."

"Yes, sir!" five voices rang out.

Nate reached to the back of his helmet and ejected Andromeda's chip. He watched Raph especially carefully, and smiled to himself when the other Spartan shifted his weight forward, trying to control the urge to bounce.

Chip in place in a holoport, Andromeda flickered into view. Nate was surprised at the physical form she had chosen – rather than the typical attractive human shape most female AIs chose, Andromeda's holographic form was that of a small mammal with a large bushy tail.

"She's a squirrel," Zeke said slowly. "I think, based on the shape of her ears, that she's a red squirrel. And… she's an AI. You hate AIs."

"Way to go, genius," Cas teased. "Yeah, what's with that anyway?"

"ONI. Enough said," Nate grumped. "Either way, I'm stuck with her."

"If you boys would kindly stop gawking," Andromeda said, "I shall acquaint myself with the _Devastation_'s systems, shipboard AI, and chain of command. Zeke, I will be working closely with your partner as well as Nate; may I ask you to allow us a meeting?"

"Of… course." Zeke ejected Cynisca's chip and placed it in a spare holoport. Cynisca briefly showed her form – the typical human appearance, but a curvier variation than was normal – and then disappeared.

"Well that was weird," Raph said. "Hey, cool, so boss, does this mean we have two AIs on the team now?"

"What do you think?" Lin mocked, a gleam of intent in her eyes. This was revenge. Nate frowned – petty squabbles and grudges were beneath them.

"Behave," he growled. "I need to get out of this armor."

"You got your zero-suit on underneath?" Zeke asked.

"Of course I do. It wouldn't matter if I didn't, anyway."

"Yeah – except for the fact that your fatigues are in the barracks," Lin reminded him, voice teasing. "You want to run through half the ship naked, I won't stop you, but you'll never live it down!"

"Not that the zero-suit leaves anything to the imagination, regardless," Nate said, laughing as he removed his helmet. A team of techs swarmed around him and began dismantling his armor.

"Suit yourself," Cas said, and then snorted at his own pun. Nobody else laughed. Cas groaned. "Story of my life. Why aren't I funny?"

"Because your jokes suck," Zeke said matter-of-factly.

"That's true."

* * *

**AN: sorry guys, this one sucks. And it took forever. Again, sorry!**

**Next chappy will probably be the briefing for the next mission, and then we'll see. Keep reading, guys!**

**Remember, reviews are most welcome and much appreciated. Please tell me what you like, what you don't like, any suggestions or thoughts. I might take cameo ideas too, so if you want one of your characters in the story, let me know. As always, Halo ain't mine, story and characters are.**


	10. Ch 9

Nate led his team into the briefing room and was surprised to see Jeod and _his_ team standing there, listening to what Anderson was saying. Nate and his team stood a respectful distance away and waited in silence, also listening.

"And lastly, you and your team have interrupted the order of things aboard my ship. I'll not have that. You need to be more inconspicuous, and for heaven's sake, Spartan, keep your men in check! I have had enough of these reports. Six Helljumpers so far, and their reports have been substantiated by multiple witnesses. If I hear one more complaint, to hell with the Admiralty, I will drop you off on the next UNSC-occupied world we pass. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," four voices confirmed in what Nate thought was a rather subdued tone.

"Good. Dismissed. Now, Lieutenant Commander."

"Sir!" Nate saluted. His team followed suit. Part of his mind tracked the other Spartans as they saluted and left.

"At ease."

"Sir, permission to speak freely?" Eli requested before the General could continue.

"Granted."

"What the _hell_ was that all about?"

"What that was about, soldier, is none of your business. Keep your noses out of it."

"Yes, sir."

"Now that that's out of the way, I have orders for you."

Nate and his team waited.

"Operation CEASEFIRE was a roaring success thanks to you… all of you. The Admiralty wishes to reward you for your actions, but first, we have need of you for another operation. Operation BLITZKRIEG will be fast, bloody, and dangerous. You Spartans are the best choice for the task at hand. The Admiralty wants you to head up BLITZKRIEG and I have to say I agree with their assessment of you. You will be the tip of the spear. You will lead an assault on the largest Insurrectionist facility this side of Hell." Anderson paused and lit a cigar.

"New Berlin," Zeke breathed, finally understanding the Earth War Two reference.

"Indeed. This will be risky, as I said. You will have limited supplies, ammunition included, and while we will give you what air support we can, the _Devastation_ does not carry many bombers. She is designed for deepspace combat, not orbital offense or air support for ground troops. Your primary objective is the death or capture of the Insurrection's regional leader, General Henry Koch. Capture is preferable if possible. He may have some valuable information for us.

"This mission is unusual, for you. There is no element of stealth, nothing to repossess, and more backup than you can poke a stick at. You will be expected to assault them head-on, swift and lethal, and fight your way through their defenses, which are, as you can see, impressive."

A schematic appeared above the holo-table. Nate and his team moved closer, the better to examine it in detail.

"Several anti-air guns, anti-personnel turrets, anti-vehicle turrets, too many rebel troops to count, and four munitions warehouses? You're not wrong, General. This one will be bloody – on both sides," Zeke said, the quickest to analyze the schematic just like always.

"I would rather use our talents for stealth to get in close to the target and eliminate or capture him with minimum risk," Nate agreed. "May I ask the reason for a head-on assault?"

"This is not simply a kill-or-capture mission, Spartan. The Admiralty wishes to send a message. This message is to be emphatic, and must hammer home the truth we all know – that the UNSC is here to stay and that any kind of insurrection will not be tolerated. You will be inserted just ahead of the ODST contingent, and you will be expected to wait for the Marines to hit the ground. Gather all the troops and lead them as no other soldier can, Spartan. We will suffer heavy casualties but with you and your team at the helm, we will win."

Nate was not sure they could afford to suffer heavy losses fighting the rebellion. The Insurrection _was_ strong enough to be a real threat and it _was_ gaining momentum. The Covenant, on the other hand, threatened to wipe out mankind entirely. While the Covenant was technically the priority, the Insurrection weakened the UNSC, and therefore had to be eradicated if the human population wished to live on. However, Nate did not believe a brainless full-frontal attack was the answer.

As much as he might disagree, orders were orders. "Yes, sir."

"We drop out of slipspace in one hour, Spartan. You will travel to the surface by Pelican and will be dropped a few miles from the facility, soon to be joined by the ODSTs, and as you know, later, the Marines. You will be expected to place full trust in these men and women; they have all proven themselves capable in battle. All are decorated for their combat achievements, and most are decorated for their loyalty and valor under impossible circumstances. Not one of them ranks lower than Lance-Corporal and several outrank you, Lieutenant Commander, but will follow orders you give because you have been appointed commanding officer of this mission."

"Yes, sir."

"You will be tested. I expect you all to rise to the challenge, look it right in the eyes, and shove it up its own ass."

"Don't take that too literally, Raph," Nate said quietly. Cas snorted.

"Remember, Spartans, you are the best we have. Do us proud."

"Sir! Yes, sir!"

"Go. Prepare yourselves. Gather your troops – they have already been briefed – and pack what supplies you can load onto the Pelican fleet. My advice is to concentrate on ammunition, weapons, and medical supplies. This campaign will not last long enough to bother with food. Dismissed."

"Yes, sir!" Nate bellowed, and was pleased to hear his team-mates match the volume and passion. All six snapped smart salutes and then Nate turned and headed for the door, his soldiers falling into formation behind him. Once they were through, Nate flashed his acknowledgement light green.

"Double time it, Spartans! To the hangar!"

_-LATER-_

"If you pack one more round onto that Pelican, you'll have to jump planetside," Thunder warned Nate. "She can't carry much more. You and your Spartans, and what's already there, are all she can handle."

"Fair enough," Nate agreed, surveying the boxes upon boxes of ammunition. Louder, he said, "This one's full!"

"Two more to load, sir," a passing Marine said, puffing a little under the weight of _another_ box of ammunition. "Sure is an honor, sir, fighting alongside you and your boys."

"Thank you, soldier," Nate said, having learned long ago that it was easier to just thank them than deny it. Or correct the common misconception that all Spartans were male.

_"Anderson seemed edgy earlier,"_ Andromeda commented in his mind. _"It was not to do with the other team, and more to do with something on his personal terminal. I shall have to hack into it upon our return."_

"I'd leave you here if I could," Nate said. "That would allow you to continue with Task B, and get you out of my head for a while."

_"You know you love me,"_ the AI teased. _"Besides, you will need my analytical skills for this upcoming engagement."_

"I don't _need_ anyone," Nate denied. "I thought Task B was supposed to be a high-priority order."

_"It is. Cynisca remains aboard the _Devastation_ and will keep tabs on Anderson for me. If anything suspicious happens, I will know. If the good General proves to be guilty of what ONI wishes to pin on him…"_

"If? I thought they already had some evidence…"

_"No, nothing at all. They want him out of the way. I don't know why, that isn't in the communiqués, but there is a plot. A conspiracy if you will… I am not sure why they do not simply plant one of their own operatives on board and fabricate evidence because honestly, they know better than to ask such a thing of you, and I believe they will find nothing."_

"So why was he so funny about that terminal this morning?"

_"My guess is he's up to something he doesn't want his wife to find out about. All these men enjoy something their wives would not approve of – be it mistresses on other worlds or pornographic images and videos – and Anderson, while an honorable man, is no different. I have caught him flicking through an old pornographic magazine… I tap into the ship's security cameras regularly and therefore I see everything."_

"His wife is in ONI…" Nate was not sure to whom he owed his loyalty. ONI had created him, but Anderson was a good man.

_"Exactly. She probably knows already, based on the communiqué I intercepted last night."_

"So she's in on the plot?"

"Talking to yourself, Spartan?" a Marine teased.

"My AI," Nate explained. "Andromeda, say hello."

"Why exactly should I speak such a _boring_ greeting when I can come up with something better?" Andromeda used Nate's helmet's speakers to broadcast her voice.

"Whoa…" the Marine blinked. "She sounds like my wife's sexy voice."

Andromeda laughed. It was a bubbly sound. "I'm a squirrel!"

"A… squirrel?"

"Yep," the AI said cheerfully.

"Don't you have work to do?" Nate said pointedly. The Marine nodded and scrambled to carry on with his work.

_"That was fun. Yes, the wife is in on the plot. I doubt we will find anything incriminating on Anderson, honestly, apart from the fact that he is most likely having an affair. That, I believe, is what the 'suspicious communications' refer to… and the unidentified addressee is probably the mistress."_

Nate blinked and went to help a Marine who was struggling with a box of supplies. The struggling Marine was only 4'11" tall, female, and would have weighed less than a hundred pounds.

"Need a hand?" he asked, taking some of the weight before the Marine could answer.

"Thank you, sir," she said. "The weight isn't a problem, sir, it's the bulk."

"You're so small, I'm not surprised. I know you're strong, though – I saw you benching three hundred this morning. Impressive."

"Thank you, sir. I pride myself in keeping up with the men. I might only weigh eighty-four pounds, but I'm just as tough, just as strong, as any of them."

_Wow, only eighty-four? I could lift her with my little finger…_ "I don't doubt that. I never met someone shorter than 5'6" who wasn't as tenacious as a pitbull. You shorties are always tough."

"Compared to _you_, anyone is short," the Marine said with a friendly smile. "I never realized Spartans were so tall. What are you, eight feet?"

"Eight feet exactly," Nate confirmed. "I'm about average for a Spartan. Some of us are taller. Some of us are sho- er, less tall." He helped the little Marine load the box into a Pelican and for a moment had the full weight in his hands. It was about a hundred pounds, which was quite light for these boxes of supplies, but it was also nearly twice the size of any of the ammunition boxes. A quick glance at the label on the side confirmed his suspicions – medical supplies.

"Less tall is definitely the word for it, even if the grammar is dreadful," the Marine said, smiling again. "I wouldn't call any Spartan 'shorter', hah!"

"You're chatty today," Eli observed. Nate turned to look at his second-in-command and saw a smile in Eli's body language.

"It's good to be going back into the field," Nate said. "I nearly went mad back on Reach with nothing to do."

"Speaking of going mad, how'd that psych eval go?"

"I managed to look sane for the hour it took. You know what UNSC psychiatrists are like… the slightest sign of anything and they're all over you."

"What'd they say?"

"Like I said, I managed to look sane. Anderson only ordered it because I was six months overdue for another eval. I don't know why he doesn't put his foot down about Raph… how long is it now?"

"He was supposed to have an eval three years ago. I'm not sure how he got out of it." Eli chortled as he lifted three boxes of ammunition at once. Nate did the same.

"Same way we always do, Eli. We were busy killing Innies."

_-LATER-_

Nate felt the jolt as the _Devastation_ dropped out of slipspace. He watched from his seat in the Pelican as Marines bolted for the last few ammo crates, all jabbering about how they wished the others would hurry up and do their jobs for once. Most of them inserted various curses, varying in violence from 'bloody' to 'fucking' and more besides. Such was the way of the Marine, Nate thought with a smile.

"Here we go, Spartans," Thunder said, lifting his Pelican into the air as the last Marine sprinted for his assigned Pelican. The hatch closed, and Thunder waited two seconds before sealing the hangar from the rest of the ship and depressurizing it. Nate felt the Pelican start moving and assumed that Thunder had released the airlock and opened the doors. Normally assumptions were dangerous, but where Thunder was concerned, it was safe to say the pilot was very predictable.

Predictable, Nate thought, and _smart_. Thunder was the best; probably the only pilot in the UNSC that Nate would trust like a brother, and clever enough to get out of really nasty situations should the need arise.

Normally, Nate chose to stand, or to sit on the floor. He rarely used the seats, and was _never_ strapped in. There was no point in restraints. No restraint was strong enough to keep a fully-armored Spartan in his seat regardless. This time, unfortunately, if he sat on the floor he would be in the way, and if he stood, it would throw off the balance of the Pelican. That didn't matter so much in space but once they entered the atmosphere, it was vital that the dropship be well balanced.

"I hate this," Eli muttered.

"So do I," Nate agreed with a frustrated sigh. "We're going to lose so many great soldiers today, and for what? To send a _message_? They should just bomb the place to Hell and back if they want to send a message. Less risk to the troops. We can't afford to put so many at risk."

"Exactly. The Covenant is a bigger threat than we give them credit for, and as much as it irritates me that the Insurrection weakens us from within, the answer is _not_ throwing soldiers at the wall until it crumbles. We'll lose too many that way."

"Orders are orders," Nate reminded everyone. "This is crazy, but I'm sure that Command has thoroughly considered the pros and cons and has made the decision based on some reasoning or another that we are not privy to."

"Hey, crazy's kind of what we _do_," Raph said.

"He has a point," Cas pointed out. "I mean, who else is mental enough to go in, lightly armed, lightly armored, and infiltrate a facility full of crazies with assault weapons and rocket launchers? Last year, that was, remember it?"

"Too well," Nate said, allowing a hint of bitterness into his voice. "When Zeke bought the farm and I tried to feed his pigs." Those were old colloquialisms – 'nearly died' and 'almost got blown to smithereens' respectively. "I think Raph was the only one of us who got out of there in one piece."

"Yep," Raph confirmed smugly. "My rocket launcher saved the day, if you'll remember."

"Yeah, and _their_ rocket launchers sent you batshit crazy," Zeke teased. "One too many concussions, eh?"

"Hey!" Raph aimed a playful punch at Zeke's shoulder. Zeke could have dodged it, but took it good-naturedly.

"Entering atmosphere in five," Thunder announced. Exactly five seconds later, the Pelican shuddered. "It's gonna be a smooth one today, I think. We're dropping into perfect weather."

Nate smiled to himself, too familiar with Thunder's pilot jokes to fall for it. They _were_ dropping into good weather, but New Berlin was famed for its turbulent air currents, and Thunder liked to scare his passengers half to death by announcing unexpected mechanical failures when they hit turbulence. It worked best if the passengers weren't already expecting it.

"The Helljumpers are in their pods and the Marines are ready to go," Thunder informed them. "Once we're groundside I'll send the order for them all to get down here."

Nate said nothing, but felt the Pelican shudder a little, and used hand signals to warn his team to brace themselves for turbulence. The Pelican suddenly dropped a few feet in mid-air. Nate had to grab his seat to keep from hitting the roof. Zeke wasn't quite fast enough, but was marginally heavier, so fell almost at the same rate as the dropship.

"Uh-oh," Thunder said. "We lost something."

"Liar," Eli said. "That was just turbulence. It's always just turbulence."

From there, they rode out the turbulence in silence. Thunder didn't bother trying to play pilot jokes on the Spartans, and the Spartans were too busy trying not to break things to speak amongst themselves. A half-ton of Spartan and armor bashing into something was no joke. It was all they could do to stay in their seats.

"All right, Spartans, we're coming in a bit quick, but nothing you can't handle. I'll bring you in as low as I can… we don't have a cleared LZ, so you'll have to kick out as much of the supplies as you can, then jump. Opening the hatch in five."

"Roger that," Nate said. He started tossing crates out the moment the hatch was far enough open, and with his team's help, managed to empty the Pelican before Thunder warned them they had to jump. Before the pilot had a chance to say the words, six Spartans dropped like stones, still a couple of hundred yards above the ground.

"Armor lock!" Nate ordered, and then followed his own advice. He hit the ground with a massive _THUMP_, unlocked his armor, and climbed out of the crater he had made, looking around to see his team do the same. "Status report! Angel Leader, green across the board."

"Angel Two, right as rain, sir!" Eli flipped a quick salute.

"Angel Three, all good," Cas confirmed.

"Angel Four, green." Lin brushed dirt off her armor, then reached back for her rifle.

"Angel Five, locked and loaded." Raph's voice was, as usual, satisfied and eager.

"Angel Six, ready to go." Zeke was nowhere to be seen. Nate wondered what had happened to him, then saw him jump down from a tree. "Hah. Just my luck to end up in a tree when everyone else got to the dirt."

"Thunder, we're groundside and awaiting the rest of the troops," Nate said on the open UNSC channel.

"Roger that! ODSTs ETA two minutes, Marines five. Thunder out."

"All troops rendezvous at this location," Nate said, broadcasting a nav marker. "This is Rally Point Alpha, and will be our forward base for this campaign. Spartans, gather the supply crates and transport them there."

"Sir!"

"Marines, Helljumpers, do you copy?"

"Yes, sir!" one representative of each confirmed. The Helljumper was a little grudging, but respectful all the same.

"Do you have a read on the nav marker?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Excellent. Form up at that location with as many supplies as you can manage."

"Sir, yes, sir!"

"I'll see you all groundside."

* * *

**AN: I'm terrible hahaha everything must have a conspiracy of some sort! There's a surprise coming up, cookies to whoever guesses correctly before the next chapter is posted. No hints!**

**As always, please review. Tell me what you like, what you don't like, and what you'd like to see in future chapters.**

**Halo isn't mine, characters and story are.**

**I LOVE YOU GUYS.**


	11. Ch 10

"Ah, shit," Zeke swore, elbow deep in Warthog parts. "This one's not going to start without _days_ of work. I can't even do a hack patch in less than two days."

"Just going to have to go without, then," Nate said. "How did it happen?"

"I don't know. Best guess, the tree it hit on the way down did this damage. That, or somebody's an idiot."

"I'd like to assume it was the tree," Eli cut in. "Best not to alienate the normal people."

"Normal? Them?" Raph eyed a group of Helljumpers. "I think not."

"Shall I clarify? Normal compared to _us_."

"Oh, well in that case, sure."

"Stow it," Nate ordered. "Enough talking. I know we're still waiting for a few ODSTs to turn up, but if you have time to talk, you're not working hard enough!"

Nate climbed up a tree, the better to survey the area. His sharp eyes picked up a little rebel activity to the east; what looked like a patrol of about six to eight men jogged across a clearing. Nate double-counted and came up with eight. He could easily have taken them all out with his sniper rifle, but opted to leave them be.

The element of surprise would prove useful, if he could maintain it.

Eli joined him up the tree. "Surveillance?"

"I can see for miles, but I can't see through these damned trees. I need someone I trust down on the forest floor, keeping an eye out for trouble."

"I can put Lin and Zeke on it?"

"Good idea. Zeke can't do anything else for that 'Hog."

Eli disappeared for a moment. Nate closed his eyes and listened carefully to the forest, giving himself over to his senses completely. There was a lot of life in the forest, but the only thing remotely close to humanoid was the monkey-like native tree-dwellers Zeke kept calling Triffids. That wasn't their actual designation, but the designation was long and hard to remember. Nate would hear a human coming a mile away. His ears were sharp enough that, given a chance to concentrate on specifics, he could even tell the difference between the sound of a UNSC soldier and the sound of an Insurrectionist.

Eli returned. Nate did not open his eyes, instead focusing more deeply on what his ears told him.

"They're on it," Eli informed him, quietly so as not to overload him.

"Good," Nate said, matching Eli's volume out of habit more than out of necessity. "I can hear someone coming. Two – no, three. Helljumpers, I think. One woman, two men, all experienced."

Eli nodded and relayed the message to the ground teams.

"We got eyes on," Zeke said a few seconds later. "Nate was right, it's Helljumpers. Two more and we're good to go." The tech added the names of the three to the 'present/accounted for' list. That list included two Helljumpers who had died in their pods thanks to turbulence, and another whose pod had landed in a lake. That one had drowned.

The branch Nate was on creaked. He moved to another branch. It had held this long but that didn't mean it wouldn't give way. He sighed. "Eli, keep an eye out up here. I'm headed back down. I can do more good on the ground than up a tree."

"Always knew you was outta yer tree," a Marine said. Nate controlled the urge to laugh, and dropped out of the tree to land cat-like on the ground. Still he kept his eyes closed and used his ears to navigate.

"I can hear two more," he said cautiously. "I can't tell whether they're ours or the enemy… I want you all on alert, weapons ready, but don't fire until I say so."

"Sir, yes, sir!" several voices confirmed. Nate didn't pay enough attention to them to know how many or whose voices they were.

He opened his eyes. The forest was too thick for him to see anything just yet, though he knew that without all these _trees_ in the way the unidentifieds were well within visual range.

"Friendlies inbound," the two approaching humans called on the comms. "Lieutenants Carol Beck and Hanson Firth of the 105th."

"Welcome home, brother and sister," a Helljumper replied warmly.

"That's everyone," Zeke confirmed. Nate watched the 'absent/unaccounted for' list disappear, and a second later, the two new names were added to the 'present/accounted for' list, which also disappeared when he flashed his acknowledgement light green.

"All right, everyone, standard formation. Spartans at the head, then Helljumpers, and then Marines. Form up and move out!"

"Sir! Yes, sir!"

-_LATER-_

Predictably, the fighting was fierce. Nate and Eli held back, sniping from cover, while the rest of Angel Team fought at or near the front. Raph was a few rows back with his rocket launcher. Cas waded into the Insurrectionist troops and started killing with his knife. Once he lost that in an Innie's neck, the close-quarters expert opted for his bare hands instead. He snapped necks, shattered arms, cracked skulls, and caused mayhem.

The Spartans had the advantage of energy shields and special armor, but the Marines and Helljumpers did not, and as such they fell at almost as alarming a rate as the Innies. Nate frowned and fired off four quick shots. As he reloaded, he muttered to himself about how Command could be completely idiotic sometimes.

"Where's the point in it? We're losing as many as we're killing. Damn it, this was an idiotic tactic, and I knew it… I could have prevented this, all it would have taken was one order to send half the troops around to flank them…"

_"That would be insubordination, and Command would be distinctly unimpressed."_

"I know, Andi, I know."

_"Andi? I like it. You're giving me nicknames now. Am I growing on you?"_

"Andromeda's kind of long." Nate kept firing as he talked; he was unwilling to admit it but the AI was right… maybe she wasn't so bad. As he watched the fight, he saw one Helljumper lob a grenade. "Watch out, Cas, there's a frag in there somewhere. Whoever threw that – _be more careful_, there's a Spartan in there!"

"I see it," Cas said. "Hm, nice throw."

The grenade exploded, along with a good ten or fifteen Innies, and set off a couple of grenades that were on dead enemies' grenade belts. Blood and dirt was flung in every direction, along with a few relatively intact body parts.

"Ugh," Cas grunted. "Guts on my armor. Lovely. I take back what I said about a nice throw."

"Be sure to hose off before we get out of here," Eli said.

"He'd-" _BOOM_ "-better." Raph reloaded his rocket launcher for the tenth time. "Last two rockets, guys. Gotta make 'em count!"

"Shoot for the back, if you can get an angle," Nate said. "I can see the target, but I can't get a good shot."

"Nah, I'm too low down, gotta go for the front. Where's Eli sniping from?"

"A tree to your five o'clock. Eli, do you have an angle? I'll mark the target in your HUD." Nate did so.

"Not quite, but I can hurt him from this angle. Perhaps badly enough to kill him. Depends on how fragile he is." _CRACK._ "Got him. Yeah, really bad angle. I might've hit one of his kidneys. He'll be in a world of pain, but he won't die for a while… not until he bleeds out and that's only going to happen if they don't have biofoam."

"I'm going forward," Nate said, and started leaping from branch to branch, tree to tree.

"Careful. If you get hurt, we can't get you out."

"I know. I've got this."

_"If you get to this place," _Andromeda said, placing a marker in Nate's HUD, _"you will have an excellent angle for a headshot. At this range, with your training, it would be impossible to miss."_

"Thank you, Andi." Nate wasted no time in getting to the indicated position. The marker disappeared. He turned back to the fight, located his target, and fired.

_"Nice shot."_

"Thanks. You helped." Nate slung his rifle across his back and pulled out his knife, leaping down from the tree a moment later. He was of a mind to emerge from the battle with red armor, mostly to confuse the hell out of Anderson who would be expecting Cas to be the only newly-bright-red Spartan.

Immediately, he was surrounded by Insurrectionists who were either too brave or too stupid to keep their distance from a Spartan wielding a large combat knife. Nate leapt, ducked and dodged, jabbing enemies with his knife as he did so. Before long, blood slicked the handle, and his vision was obstructed by a splatter across his visor.

"Zeke," he said.

"Sir?"

"I need the stats."

"UNSC casualties fifty-two and rising steadily. Enemy casualties, uncertain. Likely in excess of one hundred. Rising quickly. Percentage chance of a UNSC victory is 96% and holding steady. We will, however, suffer many more losses before this battle is through."

"Projected estimates?"

"We will do well to have fifty survivors, sir. General Anderson was painfully correct when he said this would be a bloody engagement."

"We'd all be dead by now if the bombers hadn't taken out all the gun turrets," Lin reminded everyone.

"Watch out, they're making another run," Zeke warned.

"Cas, fall back to minimum safe distance," Nate ordered. "I won't have any of my Spartans lost in this conflict."

"Sir!" Cas confirmed. Nate could easily see the big Spartan, who stood two and a half feet taller than the tallest normal human on the battlefield. Cas was just shy of nine feet tall, and shoved enemies out of the way, snapping all manner of bones as he went. Nate was in the middle of the enemy forces, but already outside minimum safe distance, so he kept on fighting.

Death fell from the sky. The ground exploded and sent Nate flying. He somersaulted in midair and landed on his feet, but slid backwards six feet and nearly lost his balance. He had to step backwards to keep himself from falling flat on his back. Blood and dirt coated everything in a fine layer, so that the world was a bright-and-somber mix of red and black-brown.

Nate and his team led the surviving ODSTs and Marines in mopping up the last if the Insurrectionists. Operation BLITZKRIEG had indeed lived up to all expectations of being a swift, bloody and dangerous operation, and based on orders, was a success. Nate could not bring himself to feel satisfaction at the outcome. Too many good men and women had been lost in the course of the battle.

"Is anybody hurt?" Lin asked over the comms. "Anyone at all?"

_Not,_ Nate thought, _in a way a medic can help…_

_"Don't take the blame for this."_

"It _is_ partly my fault."

_"Could you have directly disobeyed orders from the Admiralty, Nate?"_

"No."

_"Then how is it your fault?"_

"I could have done more. I should have done more."

_"It's not your fault. Don't you dare blame yourself."_

"Andi…"

_"Fine. Don't come crying to me when you fail your next psych eval."_

"Andromeda, for the love of peace, stop it. Stop trying to control how I react to things. My reactions are _mine_, not yours." Nate unslung his rifle, partly to keep himself from punching something, and partly to keep himself from ejecting Andromeda's chip and throwing it away. That would _not _go down well with ONI.

_"I'm… sorry."_

Nate ignored her.

* * *

**AN: Didn't take quite the turn I expected... next chapter, then, the surprise! Sorry, another bad one. It's nearly 6am and I haven't slept... BAD ARIANE BAD! -kicks self-**

**...Anderson DID say it would be quick and bloody...**

**As always, please review! Tell me what you like, what you don't like, if you see any continuity/grammar/spelling errors... what you would like to see in future chapters... the works. Cookies are still available for the person who correctly guesses the surprise, when it eventually comes!**

**Halo en't mine. Story and characters are.**


	12. Ch 11

"Something's coming." Nate dropped out of his tree and into a low crouch, reaching back over his shoulder for his sniper rifle as he did so.

"What?" Eli was immediately beside him, sniper rifle level.

"I don't know. Go collect the troops for me."

"Yes, sir."

"Angel Team – on me. Incoming unknown contact."

Eli left to gather the Helljumpers and Marines, and Cas, Raph, Zeke and Lin fell into formation behind Nate.

The movement Nate could hear came closer. Whatever it was, it moved quietly, and quickly. Nate did not think it was human, but refused to rule out the possibility. He listened carefully, shushing anyone who made a sound. The tension mounted until nobody dared to move a muscle. Even the Marines held their collective breath.

"Zeke," Nate breathed, "is there any native wildlife that moves on two legs with a run similar to a human's?"

"No, nothing," Zeke said. "The closest thing to hominids are the Triffids you've already seen up in the trees. I hate to tell you this, but if it sounds like a human, it probably _is_ a human."

"Not even Spartans are that quiet," Nate denied. "Not when they're moving at that speed. Prepare yourselves – it's almost within range."

The sound of more than fifty silencers being clicked off almost entirely drowned out the sound of the stranger approaching. Nate consulted his suit's sensors, but whoever it was, they were still outside of sensor range.

"Hold your fire! I'm not hostile!"

Nate blinked. "Prove it."

He heard a sigh over the comms. "Does _oly oly oxen free_ mean anything to you?"

"Spartan," Raph said, rather obtusely.

"Obviously," Cas mocked him.

"Enough," Nate said to them. Into his comm mike, he said, "How do you know that signal, soldier?"

"Same as you do. From way back in the day, when – wait a second. I don't know you." The other Spartan finally came into view. Her armor was matte black, like ANVIL, but nearly as bulky as MJOLNIR. "How is that possible?"

"Are you one of the thirty-three?" Zeke asked.

"Yes and no… are _you_?"

"Obviously not," Lin replied.

"Yes and no," Eli repeated. "What does that even _mean_?"

"That's classified."

"I'll find out anyway," Zeke said confidently. "There's not a security system that can keep me out. No firewall strong enough… no encryption complex enough."

"_Fine_. Agent Alpha – who I am now – is not one of the thirty-three. My cover, whose identity you are not cleared to know, _is_."

Raph's body language suddenly became wary again, almost hostile. Nate watched him out of the corner of one eye, and whoever this _Agent Alpha_ was, she also watched the loose cannon carefully.

"I have to apologize for Raph. And I have to ask what you're doing here. New Berlin has been rebel-controlled for decades." Nate saw the brief flicker of doubt in the stranger's body language and realized he had struck gold. "You're going to have to prove to us that you're not a rebel spy."

"Me, go rogue? I think not. I hunt rogues down."

"She's a Solo," Lin realized.

"What in hell's name is a _Solo_?" Cas asked, clearly bemused.

"They hunt down rogues. Most of their job is hunting down deserters and Insurrectionists – not that much different to what we do – but they were created for the purpose of eliminating rogue Spartans, because nobody else can." Lin nodded with an almost frightening finality.

"What say you, team?" Nate asked. "Do we trust the Solo?"

"I have a bad feeling about this," Raph said.

"Shut up, idiot," Cas grumbled. "You always have a bad feeling."

Eli reappeared, reacting to the Solo's presence as if she had always been there. "Only time you're in danger from a Solo is if you're a rogue. Are you a rogue, Raph?"

"No!" Raph's indignation was clear… but Nate suspected a false note to it. He frowned and resolved to watch his explosives expert more carefully.

"Then you've got nothing to worry about. Tell me, Solo, is there any man or woman here who is the subject of an ongoing investigation?"

Alpha shifted her weight, an uneasy gesture. "No… but I need to get onboard the _Devastation_. My assignment demands it."

_"ONI sent her,"_ Andromeda said bitterly. _"It remains to be seen whether they have managed to corrupt her enough to plant false evidence. Be alert, but believe her words all the same."_

"How, exactly, is that possible?" Nate asked the AI.

_"That is up to you to figure out. Hey, information at last – Cynisca has been following the General via the surveillance cameras aboard the _Devastation_. Turns out he _is_ an unfaithful bastard. Oh dear. It's a soap opera playing out right under our noses. I shall ask her to see if she can turn anything up on our new friend, here."_

"Thank you, Andi."

"Well, Nate?" Lin watched him, body language expectant.

"I can hardly say no to a sister," Nate said after a long pause.

_-LATER-_

"Why's she here, anyway? We haven't got any rogues!" Raph was muttering to himself with a mixture of indignation and righteous anger.

_"I worry about him,"_ Andromeda commented. Nate wearily agreed, tired of the constant company and the _always_ having to babysit Raph. He wished Eli would hurry up and finish the final inventory checks, so that they could all be debriefed… so that they could finally discuss the strange events of the past few months without fear of being interrupted. There was never anything missing or out of place that could not be easily accounted for. Nate was tempted to just make Eli sign off on the list without the lengthy double- and triple-checking process.

_"Oh, no, no, no. With your luck, I guarantee the day you do that is the day something is missing."_

"Go away, Andi."

_"I can't. My chip is in your brain."_

"Well at least shut up, then, because I'm going mad as it is. Why didn't I make Eli babysit Raph?"

_"Eli's too soft on him. I know you're worried about his reaction when that Solo announced herself, and especially so about his reaction when Eli asked him the hard questions."_

"I hate this," Nate admitted.

_"I know. Cas should be back soon. When he comes back, you should go to the gym. Sweat it out. Maybe you'll come up with an answer. You think better when you're working out."_

"I'm tired. I don't want to come up with an answer. I want someone else to come up with an answer. By the time Eli's done with the inventory checks, Anderson will be asleep, so we can't debrief tonight anyway. I might as well try to finish _1984_ and have a crack at getting some sleep for a change." Nate was grumpy enough without all the stress that weighed on his mind. He hadn't slept well – deeply, without the nightmares – in years, and while his body was well adapted to intermittent and often interrupted sleep, stress took its toll.

He didn't know how to deal with the fact that there were thirty-three other Spartans, and some kind of a secret group of enforcers among the thirty-three. He just couldn't wrap his head around that. And then there was the whole thing with Raph. The explosives expert was getting more and more volatile. The team's bonds were beginning to fray at the edges. Gone were the friendly, good-natured jibes. Those had been replaced with mocking and ridicule. They still worked seamlessly as a group, but Nate could feel the tension thrumming in the air.

It was even present with just him, Raph, Andi and Lin. Nate was close to all his team-mates but for years, Lin had been his closest friend. She, Zeke and Eli could read his mind with unfailing accuracy. Now, Lin sat on the other side of the room, determinedly avoiding eye contact. It was unnerving.

_"Something is wrong in the team dynamic, Nate. It's not just you."_

He was _never _going to get used to Andi knowing his thoughts even before he did. "I get the feeling something's been off for years. I just haven't seen it before now."

_"Stress widens the cracks. You see it now because everything has changed, and they all have to adapt in their own ways. Played right, this will bring the team back together again… but I wouldn't know the first thing about fixing a Spartan team dynamic, so don't ask me for advice."_

"Go find Alpha's file for me… and figure out her alias. I want to know everything."

_"I'm on it. Whoa, this will not be easy, even for me – this security is second to none. Zeke and Cynisca would probably be a better choice for this mission."_

"Backing away from a challenge, Andi?"

_"Me? No, never. I was only saying that it will take me a while."_

Nate let out an exasperated sigh. "Just get going, will you?"

_"I_ am_ going."_

_-LATER-_

_He was in an ordinary house on an ordinary block of land in the middle of an ordinary street in an ordinary suburb of an ordinary town. Nate was not used to not knowing what planet he was on, but whatever planet it was, what he had seen of it thus far was just as ordinary as the house he now stood in._

_The one thing that was _not_ ordinary about the house was the size of everything. The top of Nate's head only just came up level with the kitchen benchtop. He had to reach up if he wanted anything. He glanced around the unfamiliar surroundings and wondered why everything was so big. He was eight feet tall, wasn't he? What was the use in having so much space? It was just excessive. Impractical and crazy._

_There was a noise from outside. He ran to the door, legs sluggish though not heavy. This was a dream, he realized, and in dreams he was always slow. The doorknob was out of reach so Nate fetched a massive chair and dragged it over to the door. He clambered up with some difficulty, and turned the knob. The door opened. He jumped down and ran outside._

_It wasn't just the house that was out of proportion. Everything was. The fence – the street – the cars – all of it. Nate wondered if this was another of those horrible shrinking nightmares where he shrank down to the size of an ant and eventually got squashed, but it didn't quite fit. There was already a sense of dread and foreboding._

_Suddenly an enormous _thing_ came at him, so fast it blurred. Nate frowned. That wasn't right. Nothing blurred for him. His eyes were too sharp. He tried to raise his weapon to defend himself but it was too big and too heavy in his hands, so he dropped it and cast around for something less unwieldy. He saw a stick and dived for it. The monster lost interest in him and instead went for a pair of obviously civilian humans who stood two or three feet taller than Nate._

_Nate moved as fast as he could to try to defend them, but it was too late. He wasn't fast enough. He wasn't strong enough. He wasn't big enough. He looked down at himself and saw the soft, slender arms and body of a young child._

_All his life, Nathaniel had been afraid of not being good enough. Now he saw that he had never been good enough._

Nate woke with a jolt, drenched in a cold sweat, panting as if he had just sprinted from one end of the _Devastation_ to the other and back again. He forced down the panic and tried to control his breathing before someone noticed.

"Why can't I have one goddamn night of decent sleep?" he asked himself. "One night without interruptions. Is it really so much to ask?"

_"I'm sorry. I tried to intervene. Your subconscious is… determined."_

"No, no, it's not your fault." Nate got out of bed, shivering despite the comfortable temperature, and started looking for his book. If he couldn't sleep he might as well read.

"Boss?" Zeke mumbled, roused to a state of half-wakefulness by Nate's quiet activity.

"It's fine, go back to sleep," Nate said, trying to keep his voice even and calm.

Zeke sat up, fully awake. "It's not fine. What's on your mind?"

"Really, it's nothing. I just can't sleep."

"There's always a reason," Zeke insisted.

"I'm trying to figure out why Command would order all those good men and women to their deaths, knowing full well that it was an idiotic strategy and putting specific orders in place to stop me from taking charge of the situation to minimize deaths," Nate lied. As he spoke the lie, it became the truth. His mind started going over possible reasons for each and every facet of the order.

_"I have the file,"_ Andromeda announced. _"Cynisca helped me decode it. That was one hell of a heavy code."_

"Excellent work, Andromeda," Nate said, quickly stripping off his drenched t-shirt. He rummaged through the supply case in the only corner that wasn't occupied by a bunk, searching for a fresh shirt. He couldn't find one that fit him.

"Two of yours got shredded when the rebels attacked that base on Eden," Zeke said, "and the other one's being laundered. Use one of Cas's. He won't complain."

"I will," Nate said with a frustrated sigh. "Loose shirts get in the way."

"Then go shirtless. You wouldn't be the first soldier ever to walk around without a shirt on."

"I might be the first Spartan. Plus, we're not allowed tattoos… and all of us have them anyway."

"Which Command knows already, because Medical's been over us with a fine-toothed comb a million times since we got the damn things."

"Yes but if we get in trouble for breaking uniform regulations we'll cop it for the tattoos as well while they're at it."

_"Can I make a suggestion?"_

"Go ahead, Andi," Nate said cautiously.

_"What about wearing your zero-suit and then putting your fatigue trousers on over the top? Cas and Raph do that all the time. Nobody will take a second glance."_

"Good idea." Nate fished his zero-suit out of the supply case and stripped down completely so that he could struggle into it. "I don't know why we don't just leave these on."

"We have this discussion every time," Zeke said, already struggling into his own.

"I know. I figure Command could have Engineering do something about the one major design flaw, at least…" Nate kept grumbling, but so low even he could barely hear it.

"Want a hand?" Zeke said, already fully ready to go – trousers included.

"Please. Ugh. Slightest hint of sweat and getting in and out of these things is impossible."

"That's more than a slight hint, boss. Another nightmare?"

"Mph." Nate couldn't deny it, but he refused to confirm it, so the sound was noncommittal. Zeke stayed silent and before long had fastened Nate's suit. Nate slipped into a fresh pair of trousers and enjoyed the feeling of the zero-suit against his skin. It wicked away the sweat and fit the way it was designed – like a second skin. A moment later the cool, fresh sensation disappeared, and he couldn't feel the suit at all.

_"They invented the zero-suits not to protect your modesty, but so that the engineering teams didn't feel too awkward. Most people are not comfortable with nudity. You are, because you have been trained and conditioned to be just as comfortable naked as you are fully covered."_

"I wouldn't go that far," Nate said. "I'm not comfortable out of armor full stop."

_"I take it you want to see the files yourself, rather than rely on my interpretation of them?"_

"Files, plural? I sent you for one file."

_"Yes, well, there are four pertaining to this person we know as Agent Alpha. Unfortunately I can find nothing that definitively connects her to any known Spartan, but based on physical stats and combat style, I believe I have found her cover. The fifth file, therefore, is that Spartan's file."_

"Did you find out how many Solos there are?"

_"Nothing definitive. I have found files on Alpha through Lima but cannot breach a firewall to access anything more."_

"You, incapable of breaching a firewall?"

_"It is completely impossible without the passcode, which I haven't any access to, and I cannot calculate what it might be. I have tried the obvious such as SOLO and ALPHA, and the usual ONI passcodes, but now it is locked up tight. I suspect it will need to be reset from the inside before I can make any fresh attempts."_

"I think for now we can assume that you've found all of them."

Nate hated having to wait while the door's systems verified his identity and confirmed that he was allowed in. He appreciated the necessity of the system, but wished it wouldn't take so damned _long_. Zeke was silent behind him and to his left.

What felt like an hour but was really only about a second after Nate stopped, the door chimed and opened, and he and Zeke walked into the chaos that was Engineering in the early hours of the morning. Most of these techs had not been to bed, and the rest had gone to bed early and gotten up especially to be the skeleton crew only to find the others were nowhere near ready to sleep just yet.

"They're well overdue for a good night's sleep," Zeke said conversationally. "The guys who get up early to be the skeleton crew aren't lacking, but the guys who stay up late haven't slept more than a few hours a night in weeks. I'm not sure what they're obsessing over, but whatever it is, it's big."

"If it takes _four_ techs, it's big," Nate reminded Zeke. "I got buried in bodies on Reach. Every time I had to go into Engineering for some reason or another they swamped me. Something about Sword being so close to Castle, but so painfully far… I was a big deal down there."

"Bet that was nice."

"Ugh." Nate was not a fan of people as a whole. He got tired of his own team. Raph was part of that but not the biggest part by far.

"Over here." Cynisca appeared over a holoport beside a terminal. "I've fought them off for you already."

_"Put me in the terminal, would you?"_

Nate reached to the slot in the back of his head and did as Andromeda asked, almost disappointed when her cool presence disappeared from his mind. Her form appeared in the bottom right corner of the screen, and a file came up.

"This is the file you requested. There is not much here, as you can see. Just a few passing references that ONI gathered together during a period of time where they lost track of her two years ago. _Alpha was seen on Eridanus II,_ that sort of thing. She dropped out of contact while on a mission, and later explained, as you can see, that her target found out about her mission and she had to maintain radio silence to get close enough to take him down."

The file disappeared and another appeared in its place.

"This file was rather more difficult to obtain. It details the rogues Agent Alpha has eliminated. Thus far the count stands at three Spartans including Soren whose file Zeke has already downloaded, countless Insurrectionists, and more Marines than the UNSC cares to admit. I have transmitted it to your datapad for later detailed perusal."

Again, the file vanished, and another took its place.

"Here you will find the mission reports, including helmet-cam, that Alpha has lodged. One mission report lacks helmet-cam as on that mission her helmet was almost completely destroyed, along with all data her AI partner was unable to salvage from the damaged systems. You will be interested to read in said report that she lost an eye, which was replaced with bionics, not cloning. This is a large file and is in the process of being transmitted to your pad."

Nate skimmed through a random mission report, but didn't play the video. With techs everywhere, it was best not to draw attention. He was accessing files he technically was not cleared to access. Suddenly, Andromeda closed it, and pulled up a MJOLNIR schematic. Nate sensed a tech pause and glance at the terminal.

"As you can see, diagnostics proved inconclusive, but with a little creative thinking, your tech expert was able to… oh good he's gone," Andromeda said. She closed the MJOLNIR schematic and pulled up the final 'Alpha' file.

"This is Agent Alpha's official ONI file, detailing her physical characteristics, service record, and medical data. She is highly decorated and a very capable soldier with a strong sense of morals and leans towards sniping as her favored combat style. She works with a smart AI called Snap Frost, who is eight and a half years old and has remained operational for a year and a half beyond the expected lifespan of such an AI."

"I haven't seen any sign of Frost," Cynisca commented. "Before I became Zeke's partner, I knew Frost well, and he likes to leave hints of his presence. I have seen none."

"Perhaps he is staying within Alpha's systems? If he knows you he knows of your impressive capabilities and he will be privy to some highly sensitive information. Perhaps he wishes to avoid giving up that information," Zeke said.

"Unlikely. Snap Frost is somewhat rash and childlike. He has most likely been decommissioned. This file has not been updated for nearly six months."

"Finally," Andromeda cut in, "we have this file, which I will bring up alongside to highlight the similarities. Leader of Dusk Team, Ariane-072. Same height, weight, build, combat style, hair and eye color, ethnic background, birthplace… the list goes on. The only difference is service history… and no mention of Snap Frost, though she _does_ work with an AI whose nick is Frost. Frostfall. By the way, you six are _older_ than the thirty-three… Ariane's birthdate is the only one recorded and it was not easy for me to gain access to it. She is twenty-seven years old."

"That's her," Nate said softly.

At the same time, a newly-familiar voice said, "How did you get access to that?"

"How did _you_ sneak up on _me_?" Nate answered the question with a question, without bothering to turn around.

"Answer the question, Spartan!"

"Only if you answer mine."

"I walk silently using a combination of skill and special soles, and I have been trained in how to contain my energy so that I cannot be sensed by those sensitive enough to _feel_ the presence of others."

"I work with an AI whose clearance level is above Tier-1, meaning she can access near anything without opposition, and her skill-set is impressive and diverse. She can hack into almost any file, slip through almost any firewall, and plenty I don't know about yet."

"Andromeda," Alpha said without looking at the little squirrel in the corner of the screen. "I should have known they would give her to _someone_. Hello, Cynisca – Sadri said to tell you Minaret is sorry."

"What is she talking about?" Zeke asked Cynisca.

"I'll explain later," the AI said, shrugging her elegant shoulders.

Nate turned to look at Alpha and was surprised to see a very feminine face staring back at him. Her bright green eyes and fiery red hair took him by surprise as well. "All right, Alpha, how do you know Andi?"

"You were wondering what happened to Frost? He went rampant. I was offered Andromeda as a replacement… a Solo cannot operate at full capacity with no AI partner… but refused. Frost was a squirrel as well, and after what he did, I cannot place any trust in Andromeda."

"And why are you here?"

"The same reason _you_ are, Nate. To kill Insurrectionists, to round up deserters."

_"And the other thing,"_ an unfamiliar voice – Nate assumed it was an AI – said in his comm earpiece. _"The other thing is our primary objective as well. ONI is not happy about the lack of news, Spartan."_

Nate's blood ran cold. This was bad news.

* * *

**AN: SURPRISE! hahahaha see that coming? Bet you didn't. It's been planned from the start, although I am letting most of the story evolve on its own. Not sure I'm happy with this chapter as a whole, but I like the dream sequence. It's a strong insight into Nate's mind and his insecurities. We have something coming up that's big and is about to turn everything REALLY topsy-turvy... which will be fun I'm sure!**

**As always, please review. Let me know what you like, what you don't like, what you want to see in future chapters... etc etc.**

**Halo is not mine, story and characters are barring the occasional reference to canon characters [ie Soren]**


	13. Ch 12

_He couldn't breathe. Something was compressing his chest such that he could not throw it off, and despite the impressive strength of his chest muscles, he couldn't take a breath. He couldn't hear, see, smell, or feel the touch of anything. He could taste blood in his mouth, but that was the only sensation he knew. That and the awful pressure on and in his chest as his lungs screamed for air._

_He tried to move something, anything, but couldn't feel his fingers or toes. He was trapped. He wasn't good enough to escape._

_Not good enough…_

Nate awoke with a start, gratefully gulping in air, though he knew that really, he hadn't been trapped under anything. Despite that fact, his lungs and his brain still thought he'd been starved for oxygen. It was incredible how powerful the subconscious was.

He got up and made his bed with shaky hands, sparing a glance at the clock on the card table. It was 0400; still very early but not an unusual time for a Spartan to wake… and he'd managed six hours straight this time before the nightmares had interrupted his sleep again. That was enough for the night.

"Nate…" Lin came up beside him and stilled his hands. "It's getting worse. Every time you wake, now, and it's not just that… You shake more, and for longer. Enough is enough. Time to do something about it."

"I'm fine," he said, and for once it wasn't a lie. He'd had a few days now to process the fact that ONI had sent someone else to make sure that his mission was carried out, and Lin wasn't avoiding him anymore. Nobody was, except one particular Helljumper, and _that_ was no great loss. His head was in the best space it had been in for years. He was stressed, yes, but he wasn't feeling pushed past his limits.

"Are you? Sit down. I want to make sure there's no underlying physical reason for this."

"You're paranoid," he informed his medic, but did as she said anyway. He watched as her practiced hands laid out diagnostic instruments. Everything from a thermometer to a stethoscope and whatever the hell that blood pressure measure was called.

"Shirt off."

He pulled it off over his head, and his right shoulder clicked. Its range of movement was slightly restricted by scar tissue, and the bones hadn't quite set right, but it worked just fine and was just as strong as his undamaged shoulder.

"How's the shoulder?"

"Fine. No troubles with strength, just as steady as it always was before. The scarring doesn't get in the way, the nerve is as good as new."

"You're nearly due for an annual exam, you know. Should have Andi use your armor's system to scan for anything. I can't check _everything_ without pinching some machines from Medical."

"Andi scans for anything every time I use my armor," Nate reminded her.

Lin sighed and moved behind him to check his back muscles for any knots or painful spots. Her deft hands kneaded the few tight muscles she found until they softened and released, and Nate was amused that she backed off on the pressure over the burn scar across his lumbar area. That skin was no more sensitive than the rest, and the muscles beneath were fine. Occasionally he felt the scar tissue pull but that scar had been there for years and had never caused a problem.

Lin's hands reached forward to try to take Nate's neck pulse. He laughed at that.

"You won't be able to feel it _there_, you know that! Stethoscope or wrist, Lin."

The medic opted for his wrist and got off the bed to stand in front of him. She watched the clock for fifteen seconds and then dropped his hand. "Normal."

Stethoscope already in her ears, she turned back to him and placed the cold disc against his chest. Nate flinched away from it instinctively, but Lin kept it in contact with his skin and it warmed quickly.

"Normal. Breathing is normal as well. Open your mouth."

Nate did as he was told. Lin pointed the infrared thermometer at his tongue.

"Normal." She suddenly aimed a left hook at his face. He blocked it easily and countered with a lighter right jab at one of her kidneys. His fist connected; she had braced her core in anticipation and the hard muscles stopped him from so much as bruising her.

"Reflexes normal," Nate said, laughing. He submitted to the blood pressure test, though he disliked the pressure on his arm, and that, too, was normal. "I told you, nothing to worry about."

"Maybe so, but you're still shaking. I'm not sure what to make of that."

"I'm _not_ shaking. Trembling, yes. Shaking is more violent."

"Trembling, then. How stressed are you? Answer honestly."

"I'm not going mad… yet," Nate said lightly, and while his tone was joking, he was not.

"OK then. It's the stress." Lin saw through his attempt at levity. The only thing that meant Nate wasn't stressed was 'no problem'; anything else and he was omitting information. "If you were anyone else I would order R&R but we're talking about _you_ here – it would just make the problem worse. More work? More training?"

Nate shrugged. "I don't think the gym would hold up to _more_ training. We've already broken two punching bags, a treadmill, three weight bars and a bench. Most of that was Raph. Cas broke the punching bags, and Eli broke the treadmill. Plus Zeke dented a wall last week. He and I were sparring."

"Firing range?"

"The quartermaster would shoot me himself for wasting so much ammunition. And breaking more records."

"Books?"

"I get bored when all I can do is read. What we need is another snatch and grab mission. Wake the boys and meet me in the gym by 0600... I'm going to occupy myself until then, but I'm not sure how." Nate stood and put his shirt back on, letting his left hand linger for a second on his dog tags. He slipped his pistol into his belt holster, then reached up for a handhold on the ceiling. Standing on his tiptoes he could _just_ reach it. Using that handhold he swung up, and then slipped out through a hatch to emerge in a service corridor.

"Andi, where does this go?"

_"It passes above the General's quarters, and the hatch is covered by a grate, so you could watch him for a while uninterrupted… assuming a janitor or something doesn't come along the corridor."_

"Excellent. I think I just decided what to do with my morning. Be my sentry, would you?"

_"Of course."_

_-LATER-_

Nate watched the General move about his quarters. It wasn't unusual for Anderson to be up this time of the morning – in fact more than once, Nate had been called to the bridge for orders at an earlier hour – but for some reason Nate had thought the General spent almost all his time on the bridge.

Aside from eating, sleeping, and working out, Nate could not work out what there was for Anderson to do away from the bridge. All the duties as the _Devastation_'s ranking officer were carried out from _there_.

_"I should explain where Alpha knew me from…"_

Nate frowned. This was a bad time, and Andi knew it.

_"You don't have to talk. Just listen."_

He nodded in mute acceptance. Andromeda could make of that what she wanted.

_"It's not that complicated a story, really. I was created to work with a Spartan. Specifically created for this purpose. Alpha's personality and mine were judged ninety-nine-point-eight percent compatible, and by the time I learned of Snap Frost's betrayal I had already chosen my form._

_"Frost betrayed her in the worst possible way… made use of her wetware in much the same way I make use of yours, but encouraged her to allow him to 'speed her reflexes'. What Alpha did not know was that to do such, he had to take control of her body. Eventually he earned enough trust that he could take control completely for minutes and even hours at a time… and then six months ago he started on the path to rampancy._

_"In the intensely jealous phase of his rampancy, Snap Frost took control and went on a killing spree. His jealous rage was all-consuming and, best anyone can determine, he trapped Alpha inside her own brain. She was lucky… very lucky… that Agent Charlie recognized Frost in the speech patterns, and was able to shut Frost down with the help of another AI, Leara, before more damage could be done. I was offered a few months later, newly operational, as the replacement… but because I chose the form of a squirrel, I was refused."_

Nate said nothing. There were no words. Briefly he wondered if it was something he had to be cautious of in his partnership with Andi, but wrote it off. Andi was only young, as AIs went, so rampancy was not something Nate had to fear. Not yet.

Footsteps approached the General's door, sure and very female. Nate held his breath.

_"Show time,"_ Andi said inside his mind.

The door opened.

_-MEANWHILE-_

Zeke was awake. He was only pretending not to be because Raph was irritating the hell out of Cas, and Zeke knew that _he_ would be the target if he made it known that he was not, in fact, asleep.

Raph was getting more and more immature with every mission. It was so bad that Eli had given up trying to keep the explosives expert in line. Zeke knew that Nate wasn't far off giving up himself, or at least ordering the crazy bastard to go take a break somewhere where the killing was good and the allies few and far between. Like perhaps Covenant-controlled space. Raph would never be happier than if he ever got let loose with heavy weapons and no allies to keep from killing.

Finally, when it became apparent that Raph was going nowhere fast, Zeke sighed and swung off his bunk. He was the only one of the six who was comfortable on the top bunk, and that probably because he had Cyn to look after him.

_"You rely on me too much. I'll not last forever, beloved."_

Zeke shrugged and laced his boots, ignoring Raph's attempts to draw him into the conversation. A quick glance around the barracks told him all he needed to know. Nate was off doing whatever the hell it was Nate did without the team. Eli was in a corner polishing the crap out of already-spotless weapons. Lin was absent – probably helping out down in Medical – and Cas and Raph were at the card table, Cas trying to read something on a datapad, Raph being a pest.

Nothing especially unusual. Except for the tense, angry set of Cas's shoulders, and the blissfully oblivious Raph's continued interruptions.

_Cyn, get a message to Eli's datapad, would you? Raph needs to rein himself in or Cas will kill him._

Cynisca made use of Zeke's comm unit to speak to him aloud. "Done. Dear one, I must speak with you… in private, aloud."

He was already going to Engineering to run diagnostics on everyone's MJOLNIR and ANVIL suits, a task that needed to be complete before the morning workout. He could clear the room easily enough if there were any techs still obsessing over whatever it was. To make sure nobody followed him, Zeke straightened a little as if speaking to a superior. "On my way, ma'am."

"Come alone," Cyn said, playing along.

"I understand. I shall bring nobody." He reached into a hidden locker on the wall and pulled out a pistol and a few clips of ammunition. Loaded weapons were strictly prohibited outside the firing range but Zeke went nowhere without a weapon and ammunition for it. He holstered the weapon and left, breaking into a fast jog once he was in the corridor.

"What's this about, Cyn?"

"You asked, a few days ago, what Alpha meant. It is time for me to explain."

Zeke responded by lengthening his stride, quickening his pace to what he thought of as a run. He wasn't quite sprinting, but he was moving quite fast. Fast enough to get around quickly, but not so fast he couldn't change direction at a moment's notice. Marines stopped and stared, but he paid them little heed. It wasn't so unusual for a Spartan to run through these corridors. What _was_ odd was that Zeke was alone.

"I take it you don't want to use the comms systems," he said in time with his strides.

"I want you to _see_. What I have to tell you, it is easier to _show_."

"Fair."

Engineering was deserted. Zeke stepped cautiously through the door, caught between being pleased that he didn't have to clear the room and concerned that the geeks weren't up geeking out over some bit of tech or another that they'd uncovered planetside. He reached to the back of his skull for Cyn's chip and then inserted it into a slot in a terminal.

"All right, shoot," he said.

"This is a rather long story so I hope you have time…"

"Plenty. Run diagnostics on all six MJOLNIR suits and all six ANVIL suits while you're at it."

"Of course. It all started four and a half years ago… I was newly online, and as you know I was designed and created to work with _you_. Not just any Spartan, but you specifically. The catch, of course, was that you were out of contact range at the time, so the order could not be given to pull you back for a resupply.

"As a temporary measure I was given to Solo Agent Echo after her partner, Hyperion, unexpectedly deteriorated. Hyperion shut himself down completely when he recognized the beginning stages of rampancy, though he was only four years old at the time. I was to work with Echo until a replacement AI could be created… and so I did, though she and I were not compatible as long-term partners.

"As an AI of the Solo program, I had access to everything. The most secret of files were within easy reach. The strongest of firewalls were putty in my hands. I set about learning as much as I could, so that I could better serve my temporary partner while you were unavailable.

"I also had close working relationships with the _other_ AIs. I found Snap Frost's charisma intriguing, and though Minaret could be fickle, I enjoyed her company."

"What happened?" Zeke asked, fascinated.

"Solo Agent Kilo – Sadri – with whom Minaret was partnered… left on a mission. I never found out what, where, or why. Minaret blocked me from his files very shortly thereafter, sometime between the time of the mission and the day I decided to investigate. That mission changed both of them for the worse. Minaret became moody and unpleasant, and Sadri's obsession with explosives grew. Before then, it was crazy, but not dangerous. Afterwards… I had to get Echo to minimum safe distance by tapping into a teleportation matrix of some description on more than one occasion.

"I confronted Minaret, demanding to know what had happened. She launched an attack on my systems which I was barely able to repel… ONI never found out about that, because you returned before I had a chance to repair myself enough to submit a report. Min is just beginning to show the early signs of rampancy now, according to Alpha's present partner, Beauseant."

"All of that, in just six months…" Zeke watched Cyn's avatar in the corner of the screen as she pulled up a file.

"This is all the information I have managed to gather about those six months, apart from what I just told you. It's not that much, considering. Hints and anecdotes. Nothing conclusive. I've already sent it to your datapad so you can read through it when you have the inclination."

"You're a mind reader," Zeke said appreciatively. Cyn nodded and closed the file, then disappeared from the screen. Zeke took her chip and slid it back into its slot. He double-checked the time, then, with a while yet before he was supposed to be at the gym, wandered back towards the barracks.

_-MEANWHILE-_

Nate wasn't quite sure what to think of what he had just seen. On one hand it was outright proof that General Anderson was unfaithful to his wife. On the other hand, nearly all the Marines had a little something on the side, and a lot of the Helljumpers spoke of conquests on random planets.

He jogged down the service corridor, and, when he came to a junction, broke off to his right for no reason he could put his finger on. Andromeda was chattering away about something completely irrelevant, but he paid no attention to her. The Spartan had bigger fish to fry. He still wasn't sure exactly _which_ fish, but it didn't matter.

His loyalty was to ONI, not the UNSC, not even his brothers and sister. Most certainly not to Anderson. But Anderson was a brilliant tactician, and if this mission compromised the General's military career, Earth could suffer. At the same time, if Anderson was truly what ONI implied, Earth would suffer if nothing was done. He wasn't sure which course of action was the correct one and his instincts were refusing to help.

The Spartan slipped out of the service corridor into a main passageway that was easily big enough to fly a Pelican down. He had known this hall existed, but had never been there. All the same, his stride stayed even and swift. He did not falter. Sierra-007 never faltered.

_"Nate, the shipboard AI is reading contacts. Probably Covenant – the sensors can't get a good reading on them, so we don't know for sure. Anderson will bring the ship up to Combat Alert Alpha soon."_

"Order the team to report to Engineering in their zero-suits. They'll know why. I can explain more while we suit up."

_"Aye aye."_

"Well don't that just make your fucking day," Nate growled, breaking into an all-out sprint.

* * *

**AN: I swear nothing ever goes right for Nate and the boys...**

**As always please review! Apologies for language, and huge apologies if I've made a spelling/grammar/continuity error.**

Characters and story are mine, Halo is not.


	14. Ch 13

The Outer Systems were always dangerous. There were more rebels, and the occasional unfortunate pirate was stupid enough to stumble across a UNSC vessel… but the ever-present threat of the Covenant was a matter of real emergency.

Nate stood stock still as the techies around him whipped themselves into a frenzy. Five techs to each Spartan and it was _still_ taking too long.

Finally, just as he was about to start trembling with the effort of standing still with alarm klaxons blaring, the last piece of his armor was fitted into place, and a tech handed him his helmet. He put it on and seconds later, the rest of his team did the same. In his peripheral vision he could see Jeod's team getting ready – slower, with only three techs to each – and Alpha-Ariane-whoever-she-was stood next to a locker, re-checking the compartments in her armor.

A transmission came over the shipboard intercom. _"All Sierra teams to the bridge immediately."_

"Team Platinum is still preparing," Jeod replied. "We will be Oscar Mike momentarily."

"Angel Team is ready," Nate said, "as is Solo Agent Alpha. We just need to arm ourselves and we're good to go."

_"You don't have time for that! They're sending boarding parties. Spartans, get all personnel to the bridge as soon as possible. I will vent the atmosphere from the rest of the ship, and then you will mop up the survivors."_

"Yes, sir! Angel Team is Oscar Mike." Nate filched a dropped assault rifle on his way out and reloaded it even though it still had twenty rounds in the clip. One projectile could so easily mean the difference between life and death. Twelve could make the difference between saving _one_ soldier, and saving a whole squad.

"Good luck, Spartans. Anderson out."

_-LATER-_

Nate paused to survey the somewhat awkward bunch he'd rallied together. Alpha was a loner, and definitely would have preferred to work alone. Jeod, Corey, Brent and Leo looked distinctly uncomfortable being led by someone they barely knew. Only his own team-mates held any sort of familiarity at all.

He led them on their way again, listening intently, and then heard the distinctive sound of several Elites setting up deployable cover around the next bend. He halted everyone with a hand signal. Finally, he primed a plasma grenade and a frag grenade, and threw both. The grenades exploded. The Elites bellowed roars of fury and agony, and he heard their bodies hit the floor. He had successfully kept his team from walking into an ambush, but he couldn't help wondering how long he could protect his soldiers from their one greatest enemy – himself. He wasn't good enough at his job. One wrong order and-.

_"Don't,"_ Andromeda warned him. _"This is no time for self-doubt, Nate! You are a damned fine leader, one of the best in the entire UNSC."_

Eleven Spartans. Three AIs. Covenant boarding parties. Nate's team had beaten worse odds, but each example he could think of was a _ground_ conflict. In space, the Covenant had the upper hand. At least here, onboard the pride of the UNSC's fleet, it was highly unlikely he and his Spartans would be facing anything but infantry. No Wraiths to deal with, no Banshees. It was possible they might face a few Ghosts, and almost certain that they would face portable plasma turrets… and Hunters were technically 'infantry' so he expected to face a few of those as well… but the _real_ challenges would be absent.

"Raph, see if you can find a heavy weapon somewhere. Rockets, fuel rods, plasma launcher, whatever. I won't be surprised if we run into some Hunters, and if so, heavies will be useful."

Raph flicked his acknowledgement light green, yellow, green. In context, it meant, _yes sir, can't break formation, will do so if possible._ Nate nodded sharply to confirm, moving up on a Covenant barricade using the enemy's own tech – the deployable covers the Elites had placed – as cover for his team. As he moved, he fired in short, controlled bursts, choosing to pick off Grunts over the more resilient targets where he could.

A gun was a gun and enough guns pointed at a Spartan could take him down regardless of what held them. Outnumbered, it was always smartest to even the odds before moving in on the shielded Elites. Nate felt the familiar magnetic pull of his weapon towards each target he chose, though with the assault rifle it was rather vague. He wished for a sniper rifle, but doubted he would get one.

"Sure are a lot of them for a few boarding parties," Leo commented casually, using a standard-issue M6D pistol to take down enemies as fast as the relatively small weapon could fell them.

"If they were after elimination they'd have used their plasma torpedoes and just slagged us," Zeke commented. "I dare say we have something on board that they want. The geek squad has been obsessing over something for weeks. My guess? The Covies want that. Whatever it is."

"You didn't try to find out what it is?" Nate was very much surprised. Zeke did not hold back on the search for knowledge. If he couldn't answer a question immediately – even a question he asked himself – he always sought the answer.

"I did. Unfortunately Cyn couldn't figure out the code to get into the secure compartment, and although I have broken into more secure places before, I would have had to do some damage. That would not go down well with Command."

"Andi," Nate muttered.

"Yes?" Andi said on the team channel.

"Send word to the General. We won't be making the bridge today, Spartans. We have an artifact to defend. If the Covenant want it, ONI wants it more. I don't need to remind you that we belong to ONI, not Anderson."

Nine acknowledgement lights winked green. Nate frowned when he realized it was Alpha who had failed to respond.

"Is there a problem, Solo?"

"I don't know," Alpha said honestly. "You're right, ONI will want the artifact, but I'm not sure…"

"What are you not sure about? I want straight answers here, not more of your secrecy."

"I have a feeling such a detour will not go as planned. I'm not sure it's worth the risk."

Had the words come from anyone else, Nate would have reprimanded them and repeated the order, but something told him Alpha's gut feeling was to be trusted. All the same… "We're Spartans. Risk is what we _do_. If the shit hits the fan, I'll take the fall. I simply cannot allow the Covenant to get their hands on something they want so badly."

_You haven't fought the Covenant in over a year, and look how the last time turned out._ Nate's burn scar still itched sometimes, and because he hadn't had time to stretch it out, it kept catching on his muscles. Each member of his team had nasty scars from their last encounter with the alien bastards. Nate's was the worst, splashed across his back – it covered nearly two square feet of skin – but he wasn't the only one who had been badly burned in that encounter.

Lin had a big scar from hip to knee on her left leg, which pulled regularly and shortened her stride the tiniest amount. Eli had a scar on his chest and had had to have his Spartan insignia tattoo re-done three inches lower. Cas and Raph both had scars on their arms and shoulders. Zeke had gotten away with the least scarring, though his had been the worst injury – he'd been hit by a Covenant Carbine, and the little radioactive round had punctured a lung and gotten stuck in there.

Nate was terrified he was about to lead his team into the same situation or possibly even worse.

_"Hey! I said no more self-doubt."_

Nate was tempted to snap at Andi, but instead, he gave her an order. "Find us the fastest route between here and Engineering. I want waypoints. Angel Team might know the _Devastation_ inside and out, but Alpha has been here a matter of a few days, and Team Platinum just over a week."

"Found you a route. It's pretty hot but it's the shortest distance."

"How hot is 'pretty hot'?" Nate didn't yet know Andi well enough to know whether she tended to over-estimate or under-estimate the combative force of the enemy.

"I'll put it this way, if you were a squad of Marines you'd last about five seconds."

"That won't do. Find us another route. Longer distance can end up being shorter time especially if there's less resistance."

"All right then, here – I've marked the location of the first door. Shipboard schematics suggest it's about ten minutes' fast march, barring any interference. Some of the side passages currently have Covenant forces moving through them, but if you move quickly and quietly you should only encounter light resistance."

Nate nodded once. "Move out, Spartans. Angel Two, take point."

Eli flashed his acknowledgement light green and went to the front of the formation. "At least it's not service corridors. We'd be sitting ducks in that tight a space, with so many of us."

The eleven Spartans jogged towards the waypoint, which Andromeda had placed on a door that frustratingly happened to be locked.

"Did you know about this?" Eli asked of the AI.

"Of course. I locked the doors to prevent unexpected enemy contact." The door's operating light turned green, and it chimed and opened. "I have locked a few Covenant _in_, but more importantly I have locked others _out_. Move quickly – I cannot say how long it will take them to break down the doors once they find out you are following this route."

Nate followed just behind Eli, careful as always to keep his field of fire clear of allies. He kept one eye on his motion tracker, which he had enhanced, with Zeke's help, for slightly more range – thirty meters instead of the standard twenty-five – and higher sensitivity. It would track anything that breathed.

"I have locked the door behind you. Nothing will come from behind." Andi opened a window in each Spartan's HUD that displayed their route. "I have located enemy forces in the sections marked red, but I cannot track them effectively while they are outside Angel Leader's sensor range."

"You all know the drill," Nate said. "Check your corners, make sure you keep your weapons fully loaded, and keep one eye on your motion tracker at all times."

Ten acknowledgement lights flashed green. Nate spotted a dead Marine a little farther down the corridor; an instant later, Raph saw the corpse too, and crowed with delight. "Rocket launcher!"

"Steady now, Spartan. You can pick it up once we have ensured there are no enemy troops nearby." Nate was utterly _sick_ of constantly babysitting Raphael and resolved to do something about it when they were finished repelling the Covenant troops.

"I'm not seeing anything, boss," Eli said. "Motion tracker shows all clear."

As a group, they moved cautiously forward. Nate was worried that whatever had taken down the Marine was powerful enough that even a skilled rocketeer was not enough to kill it. The other Spartans seemed to read his mind, except for Raph, who was as eager – and impatient – as ever.

"I've got something," Nate said. "Extreme edge of my tracker's range, but I've got something. Enemy contacts."

"They're in the corridor ahead," Andi said, triangulating the contacts' positions against the schematic she had accessed. "Scanning… confirmed. Three Elites – one a Major – a squad of Grunts, and four Jackals. Threat assessment determines moderate. Recommend sending three Spartans ahead to avoid congestion."

This might have been a standard corridor, but it was still too narrow for eleven Spartans to be able to fight unhindered. Nate agreed with Andromeda's assessment. "Four, Six, move forward and engage. Platinum Leader, you too."

The three applicable acknowledgement lights flashed green and Jeod, Cas and Zeke broke off from the group, running down the corridor with their weapons leveled.

"Five, take that launcher. We're going to need it. Three, gather any medical supplies you can find on the body. Two – find out who he is and list him as KIA. Platinum Two through Four, form up on me and stay alert. Alpha, same goes for you."

Seven lights flickered green. Nobody used the comms, though Nate could tell through Raph's body language that he was muttering to himself in anticipation of making a few rocket kills. Eli knelt by the Marine's head and gently palmed the soldier's dog tags.

"Lead, I have some bad news. This man is a Private from Corporal Taylor's squad. There's too much blood for just one soldier. It doesn't look good." Eli was not a medic, but any member of the team could easily identify from a blood spatter whether someone had died, and how many. "Looks like six dead, to me, but I could be wrong. I wonder where the bodies went…"

Nate watched as Eli closed the dead Marine's eyes, then straightened, letting the tags slip through his fingers as he did so. Good soldiers were dying, again, and there was nothing Nate could do about it. And there was a good chance they would never receive a proper funeral. The Covenant were particularly unpleasant when it came to dead bodies. If anything was found, Nate thought sadly, it would be bits and pieces.

"All of this has been used, Lead," Lin said. "I have three canisters of Biofoam, all empty, soiled dressings, and half a pack of Medigel which is clearly contaminated with blood. We can't use any of it. If we'd had more time to prepare, I could've stocked up and-"

"We have no time for 'if only'," Nate interrupted, listening to the sounds of battle up ahead. The Spartans he had sent ahead had no cover, but by the sound of their feet on the floor, they were managing just fine without.

He heard one last thump, and the combat sounds cut off.

"Hostiles eliminated," Zeke reported.

"Good. Hold position; we're Oscar Mike." Nate nodded to Eli. "You're still on point, Two."

As they jogged down the corridor to meet up with the forward team, Nate let his Spartans pass him so he could survey from the back. He usually liked to lead from the front but it was highly unusual to have relative strangers under his command. He didn't work with Marines or Helljumpers often, and if he did, he refused to trust them. These Spartans were as much of an unknown quantity, but familiar in a vague kind of way. The familiarity, he knew, was based on the way they moved and interacted.

Therefore, he wanted to survey the way the strangers interacted with his team. It concerned him that Raph kept tensing up whenever the Solo got too close, but he refused to think of a team-mate as a potential threat. He would reserve judgment until he saw _proof_.

Zeke, Cas and Jeod stood, rifles leveled down the corridor, waiting. Nate allowed himself a moment of satisfaction at their complete calm. Cas, as usual, was no longer green all over – now he was mottled with splashes of purple, dark red, and bright fluorescent blue as well – and Zeke and Jeod were clean. By far the most intimidating of the group was Cas, purely because the close-quarters expert stood almost casually, shoulders low and relaxed, showing no sign of concern about all the blood. Or the bodies.

Even the fact that the Covenant had attacked didn't seem to bother Cas. To the biggest Spartan in the group, it was just another day at the office. _If only Mendez could see him now,_ Nate thought, smiling.

The three fell into formation as if they had never broken out of it, and then Zeke casually dropped back to run beside Nate.

"I don't think I'll ever forget that," the tech expert said. "Cas threw his weapon aside and went straight for that Major Elite… didn't even bother to draw his knife, just ripped it limb from limb. He's done that to Minors before but I never expected…"

Nate nodded. "I don't doubt Cas could beat a Zealot Swordsmaster in close combat… unarmed. He's killed Hunters with his bare hands before. Remember that?"

"God, that was _years_ ago. Raph ran out of rockets and 'nades, and nobody wanted to waste ammo shooting at that armor."

"Ten years, to be exact," Nate said. "Now stow the chatter. I have more contacts." He sprinted for a few strides to get to the front of the formation.

"It's big. Scanning… Hunters!" Andromeda placed a waypoint on each Hunter. "Bad news… the corridor gets real narrow up there. Threat assessment: high. Recommendation: do not engage. There is no room for rockets or grenades."

"Is there another way through?"

"No."

"Then we don't have a choice. Angel Five, Platinum Four, Andromeda has marked two targets in your HUDs. Move up and eliminate them, but _be careful_ – that's a Hunter pair, and I can't afford to lose Spartans."

"I can take care of them," Alpha offered. "I have a weapon… special Solo issue gear… that will take them out."

"No way," Raph protested. "Lead gave the job to _us_!"

Alpha shrugged. "Give 'em hell, Spartans."

* * *

**AN: Not happy with this chapter. I can do better than this. They're chatty, which I don't like when they're in combat, but it's 2am and I can't be stuffed going back and re-writing.**

**I should probably give some form of definite indication of who's who in Platinum sooner or later [apart, of course, from what you already know - Jeod as leader]. Maybe we'll have some Jeod time later on. This will be a long, painful, bloody campaign, so there's plenty of opportunity for different perspectives.**

**As always please review! Tell me what you like, don't like, want to see in future chapters... I'm actually most interested in hearing what you guys don't like because I can't improve if I don't know what's wrong. Be nit-picky! If you see any spelling/grammar/continuity errors please point them out so I can fix them.**

**Characters/story are mine, Halo is not.**


	15. Ch 14

"Whoa!" Raph dodged yet another blast from a Hunter's assault cannon. No room for heavy weapons… he muttered unintelligibly under his breath. Maybe Nate should have sent _Cas_ forward for this. Maybe Raph shouldn't have protested that Solo's offer.

It was impossible to get close to the Hunters. Their bulk filled the whole corridor. The usual tactics were both out of the question.

"You take the one on the left," Leo said. "We have to get in close… it'll be tight, so we'll have to be real careful, but what choice do we have?"

Raph shook his head. "We'll be killed. Let's see if we can lure them back to where the corridor is a bit wider. If there was just room to let off a rocket or two, this would be easy."

"That's the smartest thing you've ever said, Five," Nate said over the comms. "Had I known it was _that_ tight, I'd have ordered you to do just that."

_I'm smarter than you give me credit for, you know,_ Raph thought, but he kept his mouth shut, instead slowly backing off from the Hunters in an attempt to lure them forward. Suddenly, both of them charged, moving faster than Raph expected.

"Run!" Leo yelled. Both of them turned and bolted for the wider corridor and their team-mates.

The Hunters caught up. One swung its shield. Leo dived for the floor and used his momentum to roll back to his feet. Raph tried to follow but as he moved, the shield connected hard with his left arm. His armor crumpled and he felt his humerus snap. Two ribs cracked. He was pushed into the wall and the shield pushed his cracked ribs until they broke properly. He refused to go down. It was a colossal effort for Raph to stay on his feet, much less keep running, but that was what he did.

Hunters were fast, but because of their bulk they couldn't maintain that speed for long. Raph and Leo soon broke away enough to fire off their heavies.

Raph's broken arm screamed in protest as he hefted his rocket launcher. The kickback nearly put him on his ass but the rocket he fired off impacted on the target, and a second one, from Leo's launcher, hit the other Hunter. Under the weight of the combined explosions, the Hunters hit the floor with a loud _CLUNK_.

"Tangos down," Raph said, voice deceptively even. He felt breathless, and his arm and chest hurt like hell, but he'd be damned if he was going to let it show.

"Good work, Angel Five, Platinum Four. Hold position. Bravo Group, move on up."

Leo glanced at Raph, presumably in surprise.

"Lead designates everything," Raph said by way of explanation. "And more often than not he forgets we're not mind-readers."

"I'm going to do something about your arm," Leo decided aloud. "Don't punch me."

Raph lifted his right shoulder in half a shrug and coughed once, then grimaced at the taste of blood and the light spray of red that splattered the inside of his visor. "I might need some Biofoam in my chest as well…"

_-MEANWHILE-_

"I don't like this," Nate said to Andi. "It sounded like someone got collected by a Hunter's shield. Both of them have been in contact, so it obviously could have been worse, but one of them will be injured."

"It was Raph," Andi replied without hesitation. "Scanning… he has a broken left humerus and two snapped ribs, one of which has punctured his left lung. Don't freak out on me – Leo's with him, remember, and the thirty-three _all_ have basic medic's training. All things considered Raph got off light."

"Only if we can get him some proper medical attention _soon_. Anderson's evacuated Medical, so they'll have set up a 'field infirmary' on or near the bridge. How tightly can you lock down Engineering?"

"Not tightly enough. I recommend splitting the group again and sending one contingent to the bridge while the rest defend Engineering."

"My thoughts exactly. Angel Three, Angel Six, Solo Agent Alpha, rendezvous with Angel Five and then head for the bridge. Make sure Five gets there in one piece. You are, for now, Group Bravo. Platinum Four, hold position for reconnect with Group Alpha."

"Sir!" five voices came over the comms. Nate noted the hint of breathlessness in Raph's voice, and frowned.

"He's ok," Lin said softly. "Leo's done all the first aid that it's possible to do, and Raph's a tough bastard. I'll be with them in a moment."

"We're coming back to the group, right?" Zeke asked.

"Of course," Nate said. "Five just needs an escort to get to somewhere where he can receive medical attention. Once you have got him there, you will be expected to return to Group Alpha."

"Great."

Raph and Leo came into view around a corner. Leo spared the group a brief glance, then went back to staring farther down the corridor, weapon at the ready. Group Bravo broke off, headed back the way they'd come.

"Thank you, Angel Leader," Jeod said.

"For?" Nate wondered.

"Keeping my team together. Splitting up yours instead. I wouldn't have complained if you'd given the order, but that doesn't mean I have to like the idea."

Nate smiled. "That thanks goes both ways, Platinum Leader. Your team-mate saved _my_ team-mate's life back there. Raph might be irritating and immature, but he's still my brother. Splitting the team serves its own purpose… it's nice not to have that Solo watching our every move."

"I don't much like them either," Jeod admitted. "You know, they're nearly immune to most of the rules that govern our conduct, so they can operate effectively without fear of suffering the consequences when they're just doing their job. They're specifically trained to take down Spartans – and _groups_ of Spartans – and there's no contingency for the worst-case scenario; one of _them_ could go rogue."

"You know a lot about them, considering how little ONI can keep from Cyn and Andi, and how little we actually _know_." Nate moved to the front of the formation, more comfortable leading from the front especially in very narrow corridors such as this one.

"I figured out who Agent Kilo was… and blackmailed him into telling me everything," Jeod admitted sheepishly. "I told him I'd reveal his identity to the world. That would have caused him a world of trouble. They're supposed to keep each identity completely separate, and nobody is supposed to know who is a Solo and who is not. Except the Solos themselves, of course."

Nate nodded, and the group fell silent. Nate used the quiet to listen for any sign of enemy activity, and to ponder the issue of the Solo and Raph. It was clear that neither was a fan of the other, and Raph's well-disguised fear bothered him.

If his team-mate was a rogue, he was not sure what he would do. He didn't like to think he could stand by and just let someone kill one of his brothers, regardless of what said brother might have done. At the same time he appreciated just how dangerous a rogue Spartan could be. He'd read Alpha's reports, and, as a Spartan himself, he knew how lethal his kind were.

Nate sincerely hoped that when Alpha's mission aboard the _Devastation_ was over, he would never see her again.

_-LATER-_

"Nearly there," Nate said. He heard a soft footstep, and the _snick-snick_ of the plates of an Elite's armor. "Alert, enemy contact ahead."

"Scanning… Spec-Ops Swordsmaster Elite, singular, alone. Be careful, Spartans. He'll be cloaked." Andi made a sound that was a good approximation of a human sigh. This would be bloody on at least one side, possibly both. She was a hacker… she wanted no part of this carnage.

"Angel Four, you want this one?" Nate asked.

"Is that a question, Lead?" Cas countered.

"Apparently not. Group Alpha, hold position. Angel Four, move up and engage. Enjoy."

Cas let a slow smile spread across his face as he slung his weapon over his back and drew his twin combat knives. Sure, they were short, especially compared to an energy sword, but they were made of an alloy that was almost impervious to heat, which made them ideal for blocking and parrying the Elites' ceremonial weapon, and Cas used his knives with such skill that he was easily a match for the hoofed aliens.

_A knife in the hands of a master has infinity and one uses,_ he thought as he advanced through the corridor. He spotted a shimmer and immediately identified it as his target.

"By my honor as Demon, I challenge thee," he said in passable Sangheili. Cas was fluent in two of the Covenant languages, Sangheili being one of them, but his human mouth often found it difficult to make the required sounds. He knew he had the best chance of victory if he appealed to the Elite's sense of honor – mostly because honor was something that he lacked entirely, whereas the Elite would fight fair.

"A challenge I accept with certainty of my victory," the Elite replied, speaking heavily accented English. It shimmered into full view. Cas swore softly under his breath. It was nearly ten feet tall – exceptionally large for an Elite – and in its right hand it held a non-standard energy sword almost six feet long.

They stared each other down for a full five seconds, and then the fight started. Cas's shields flared periodically, and when they did so, the shield strength indicator in his HUD diminished, then recharged. His shields, however, were the least of his problems. The length of his enemy's weapon was a major concern but didn't make things impossible – he just had to put the Elite onto the back foot and then slip in some quick-and-dirty Spartan tactics.

The problem lay in gaining the advantage. His physical strength, he knew, was superior, and his speed matched the Elite's almost exactly, but he lacked the advantage of size, which was an advantage he usually enjoyed, and his weapons were _much_ smaller.

Cas pushed himself to his absolute limits, forcing his body to move faster. He ducked, parried, blocked and dodged, trying to move closer, trying to get too close for the Elite to be able to get an easy swing. One of his knives slipped through a gap in the Elite's armor and drew first blood. As he yanked it back out again, he ducked, and an instant later the Elite swung its sword.

The Spartan lunged forward and stabbed at his enemy. Both knives punched through the armor as if it wasn't even there, and sank deeply into the Elite's arm and chest. It roared in mingled fury and pain, and Cas moved again, an instant before his enemy kicked at him. He stayed in close, fighting to try to get behind the Elite, or at least to get a good go at its neck. If he could behead it, or sever an important blood vessel, he would win.

A fist to his midsection sent him flying backwards a few feet. He hit the floor and slid a ways, then leapt up and dashed straight back into the fray. The energy sword sliced the air as the Elite tried to keep him back, but again he got in too close. Again, the Elite sent him flying back – he wasn't sure whether it was a fist or a hoof this time – and he paused a moment, revising his tactics.

It was time to fight dirty. And Cas could fight dirty like nobody else.

He dived forward, going for the Elite's legs. Take out the legs, you take out the advantage of size and put the enemy well and truly on the back foot. As his knives connected and sank into the knee joints – the ones that bent the same way as a human's knees – Cas let go of them and, snarling, grabbed the Elite's sword arm and squeezed. The armor gave way, and it dropped its sword, then came at him with both fists. Cas ducked and kicked the now deactivated energy sword aside, taking a few minor hits as he did so. He straightened, took a heavy punch to his left shoulder, and stumbled backwards a few steps.

"Only the desperate relinquish their honor, Demon. Your death is inevitable." The Elite's mandibles clicked a few times and its jaws mangled the hard consonants, but Cas understood the words well enough.

"No," Cas responded, still speaking in Sangheili. "The life lost today shall be yours, and I shall live on to fight and kill again."

The Elite was clearly in pain, but it came at him again, determined. Cas sidestepped, but his enemy anticipated the move and clotheslined him. Before he could get up, Cas found himself pinned to the floor, with the Elite's jaws in his face. He got one arm free and yanked one of his knives free. His enemy pressed its arm down across his throat. He couldn't breathe.

Cas fought against the panic that threatened to take over, struggling to free himself as he did so. If he could just adjust his position a little… he wriggled and finally got into a position where he could reach his enemy's neck. The Spartan ignored the dull pain in his abdomen and the way his lungs screamed for air, and forced the knife into the Elite's neck with all his strength. The momentum of the blow threw the alien off him and Cas got back to his feet a little awkwardly, gulping in the recycled air gratefully.

The Elite made one final gurgling sound, and with its last breath, honored its killer. "A… worthy opponent… thank you, Demon, for a truly great… battle…"

"As were you," Cas said softly. His throat hurt, and his voice was raspy. He walked over to the place where the deactivated energy sword had ended up, and picked it up, smiling faintly. Now, _he_ was in possession of the biggest energy sword he had ever seen. He attached it to his thigh, then went back to the Elite's body for his combat knives. He shook the blood off those and sheathed them.

"Tango down," he said on the team channel. "Area is secure."

Cas stumbled forwards a few steps and then fell to his knees.

"Roger that, Four. Group Alpha is moving up. What's your status?"

He smiled again. "Amber, sir. That was the best fight I've had in years…"

Cas heard running footsteps and someone shouting his name – _not_ his team designation but his actual name – over the comms. He tried to get back to his feet but instead slumped forwards.

_-MEANWHILE-_

"Cas! CAS! Goddammit soldier, respond!" Nate rounded the corner and saw what he had hoped never to see again in his life. His brother was face down on the floor a few feet away from a dead Elite. He checked TEAMBIO and swore. "Team Platinum, you all have more medics' training than I do – don't lose him. His vitals are weak and dropping."

"Sir!" Jeod, Corey, Brent and Leo confirmed. They moved quickly but calmly to roll Cas onto his back – no easy task, the close-quarters expert was _huge_ – and Nate swore again.

Cas's armor was severely damaged all down the front, which boded ill for the soldier inside.

* * *

**AN: I told you this campaign would be bloody. Two chapters into the fight and they're not even at Engineering yet... whoops! What would have been ten minutes of running had the Covenant not gotten in the way somehow managed to turn into two whole chapters... and with two Spartans out of the fight already, what does that mean for Angel Team?**

**Please review! Tell me what you like, what you don't like, what you want to see in later chapters. Please let me know if there are any spelling/grammar/continuity errors. And I promise there'll be some Jeod-perspective soon.**

**Characters and story are mine, Halo is not.**


	16. Ch 15

Jeod stood back and let Corey and Leo work. Each member of his team, including himself, was a competent medic where necessary, but he and Brent had both decided to back off. Four medics and they kept getting in each other's way. It worked better with just two.

Angel Team's dynamic was interesting. It appeared to be evolving, and from his observations, not necessarily for the better. All the same, it was clear in Nate's body language that he was terrified for his team-mate – and they referred to each other as brothers, or in Lin's case, sister. They were close… _closer_ than Jeod was accustomed to seeing. Except for one thing.

Raph was clearly the outsider, which was of his own doing. Jeod had watched the explosives/heavies expert dig himself deeper and deeper into his own proverbial grave there. Annoying the hell out of your team-mates was the quickest way to put everyone off-side. It was a crazy thing to do, but then, Jeod suspected every single member of Angel Team was a little bit insane.

It wasn't unusual for Spartans to have some abnormalities in their mental state. Jeod had almost failed last year's routine psych eval, on the grounds of a lack of emotion, of all things. He had been trained his whole life to keep his emotions in check, and to absolutely _never_ show them to anyone but a fellow Spartan. It was a Spartan _thing_, and the psychiatrist had tried to fail him for it.

Jeod suppressed an urge to shrug and moved a little farther down the corridor, towards a locked door. If he was correct, based on the _Devastation_'s schematics, this was the door they needed to get through, but Andromeda would keep it locked until they were ready to get moving again.

The unusual procedure made a lot of sense, especially when the red dots appeared on his motion tracker. Jeod watched the dots, listening for sounds that would indicate what the enemy was doing. The Covenant moved quietly – unless they were Hunters in which case a Spartan could hear them a mile away, figuratively speaking – so even Jeod's ears were not quite sharp enough to pick up anything definitive.

"They're on your tracker, too, now?" Nate asked. Jeod looked up and tilted his head to one side.

"They just came within range."

"It sounds like they're setting up for an ambush. They know we're here and they know we're heading out through that door… if it was _me_ on the other side of the door, and _them_ in here, I'd do the same."

Jeod nodded. "As would I. They have us trapped, whether we like it or not, and if they throw enough force at us they have a chance of taking us down. It's tighter in here than I'd like, with so many of us."

"We've only got six now," Nate reminded him. "I sent three to escort Raph, and with Cas down… we're down five soldiers at least until Lin, Zeke and Alpha get back."

"Six seems like a lot to me." Jeod glanced at his team-mates. "I haven't worked with more than just those three in years. You have a plan?"

"I always have a plan. I'll explain it when everyone can concentrate on my words. Corey and Leo are busy."

Jeod inclined his head to indicate that he understood, and went back to watching his team-mates work. They were efficient and calm, and Cas's vitals began to stabilize. The injured Spartan was not out of the woods yet, but he now had a chance to _get_ out.

"He's stable," Brent declared.

"Move him back," Jeod ordered. "We don't want him anywhere near that door when Andromeda unlocks it."

"Contact!" Nate suddenly yelled. "Friendly contact! We have a squad of Marines incoming. Andi, get that door open so we can lend them a hand against these Covenant."

Zeke's voice sounded over the comms. "Angel Leader, this is Angel Four. We have successfully delivered the package and are on our way to your position."

"ETA?" Nate demanded.

"Five minutes, unless we run into any resistance. Be careful, Lead – Cyn's reading heavy enemy activity just outside Engineering."

"We know. Group Alpha is standing by to engage." Nate paused and switched channels – Jeod heard his voice on the command channel. "This is Spartan Team Angel. Any UNSC personnel in Section Echo, respond."

"Angel Team, this is Fireteam Foxtrot. How can we assist?"

"We have encountered significant resistance in a tactically difficult position. Request your presence in a flanking maneuver. Transmitting co-ordinates now."

"Received. Affirmative, Angel Team. We're on our way."

"Thank you, Foxtrot. Angel out."

Jeod watched in silence as Nate paced across the corridor. It was both a nervous tell, and a means of gaining the attention of his team. Jeod did the same on occasion. It worked brilliantly. Every pair of eyes was locked onto Nate's form.

"All right, Spartans, in a moment Andromeda will unlock the door. We are in a difficult position here. The enemy is highly likely to have set up an easily defensible position, and we have little in the way of cover. Your shields, your armor and your weapons are your only defenses. Be aware of your comrades at all times, move quickly, do not stand still, and be unpredictable. If you have grenades, use them. If you have rockets – Platinum Four, that means you – use them. We have some Marines coming in to flank the enemy. Be aware you do not accidently take down allies."

"Sir!" Jeod confirmed. He was echoed an instant later by four other voices. He noted that Corey was a little slower to respond than the rest, and filed that information away for later.

"The quicker this engagement, the better our chances of victory. Don't let yourself forget that. Speed is of the essence. Let's move!"

The door lights turned green. It chimed. A heartbeat later, it finally opened. Jeod opened fire, emptying his MA5C into an Elite's shields. As he reloaded, it fell down dead, the victim of a tidy shot to the head from Brent's BR-55.

Jeod's shields flared, but held, as a fuel rod sizzled past to detonate behind him. He turned his focus to the four Grunts that held guns almost as big as themselves, and felled three of them with short, controlled three-round bursts. Nate stuck the fourth on the head with a plasma grenade and took out four other Grunts and an Elite in the process. Jeod flicked his eyes to his grenade inventory, but he only had one, and it was a frag. Too risky.

Assault weapon fire started coming from another angle as the Marines entered the fray. Jeod barely heard their battlefield banter, concentrating as he was on the enemy. One Marine had a weapon that was loaded with tracers interspersed between the standard rounds – Jeod inferred that _that_ soldier was either a greenhorn or a bad shot. Based on the shot pattern it was an SMG, which his ears confirmed when he identified the distinctive purring report among the assault rifle and battle rifle fire.

"Push forward," Nate ordered, making no distinction as to who he was speaking to. Jeod considered the order for an instant, then moved up, firing as he went.

Jeod was the first into the Covenant lines. He switched his assault rifle for his shotgun and fired from the hip, occasionally using his weapon as a club when enemies got too close. In his peripheral vision he saw Corey and Leo fighting using their knives; Corey grappled with a Major Elite and Leo ploughed through Grunts and Jackals, tossing their bodies aside like toys.

This was Platinum's first combat engagement since they had come aboard the _Devastation_. Jeod watched his team, looking for their individual tells. Corey was pleased to be back fighting the Covenant again. Leo was Leo – indifferent as to who the enemy was, just glad to face something he was allowed to kill. Brent was somewhere outside Jeod's field of vision.

The destroyer's deck shuddered. Jeod used the enemy's momentary distraction to his advantage, nervous about the sudden movement of the floor but too professional to let it get to him.

"What was that?" Brent asked.

"Plasma torpedo," Nate said, just as an alarm sounded. It nearly drowned the sniper's voice out, but Jeod saw everyone straighten a little, and felt his own shoulders tense.

Leo tossed an Elite aside and moved to help Corey with the last enemy – the same large Major from before. Jeod allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. They had won, and nobody else was injured.

"Hostiles eliminated. We should use their own defensive placements against them. These deployable covers will be useful, and look – three plasma cannons." Jeod put his back to the locked door marked 'Engineering', keeping one eye on his motion tracker as he glanced left, ahead, right.

"You heard him, Spartans," Nate confirmed. "There will be more of them. Platinum Two and Three, fetch Angel Six and carry him to cover. Andromeda, once they have him, I want that door locked up tight. Angel Two, find out what's going on."

"Sure thing," Andi said, in the same moment that the applicable three acknowledgement lights blinked green. Jeod saw them because he was a team leader and his comm unit was presently on the command frequency.

Jeod watched as Nate took position on the main plasma cannon. Without being ordered, he went to cover the starboard flank, and signaled to Leo to cover the aft flank. Moments later, Corey and Brent returned, carrying Cas, and laid the injured Spartan in cover.

"Platinum Three, stay with Angel Six and ensure he doesn't crash. Platinum Two, refer to Angel Leader for orders."

Corey's light flicked green and he looked to Nate for orders. Jeod didn't pay any attention to the hand signals Nate used. They were all Spartans, here, and Nate had proven himself to be a good leader a few times over now. Jeod would trust him with the lives of his team.

To his surprise, Eli settled into position beside him, sniper rifle ditched in favor of a BR-55.

"Spartans," a Marine who Jeod's visor identified as being a Sergeant spoke up, "do you have need of my men to assist with the defense of this position?"

"Yes, thank you, Sergeant," Nate said respectfully. Jeod glanced over at the Lieutenant Commander in surprise. It wasn't often that the ranking officer of a particular battlefield spoke to a subordinate with such respect.

"Foxtrot! Assume standard defensive formation!"

"Sir, yes, sir!" the Marines belted out in perfect unison. Jeod blinked. He hadn't seen such unit cohesion among Marines before. Usually one or two were a little slow in responding, and one or two were a little fast. Even the greenhorn with the SMG moved like a seasoned veteran, though the lad couldn't have been more than twenty years old.

"Incoming friendlies," Nate said. "Spartans. Marines, hold your fire."

"Sir!"

Again with the freakish cohesion. Every single one of them spoke at the same moment. Jeod wondered what could possibly create such a smooth symphony of voices, short of the hardcore training the Spartans had all gone through.

A moment later, the comms clicked once, then a voice came through. "Group Alpha, this is Group Bravo incoming. Did we miss the party already?"

"Not quite. There'll be more of them, mark my words. And one hell of a party it was, Four."

Zeke let out a single humorless laugh. "We know Six is down. How bad is it?"

"He's stable. Three is with you?"

"Of course."

"Good. Does she have supplies?"

"That's why we took this long, Lead – you know Three. Can't walk into an infirmary and back out without snitching some medical supplies." Zeke trotted into view with Lin following not far behind. "Whoa – nice capture! We could hold out here for days."

"Let's hope it doesn't take that long," Nate said.

_-LATER-_

"Easy now… easy…" Zeke muttered under his breath, his level of concentration so extreme he only saw the panel he was trying to get open. No damage – that was the order. And the artifact was delicate.

The sounds of battle filtered in through the door, which Cyn and Andi had locked down tighter than an ONI dossier. With five fully operational Spartans and a fireteam of the UNSC's best Marines on the other side, Zeke was confident that door would not be breached. He was free to focus entirely on his task.

Finally, the last tumbler in the complicated lock fell into place. That was only half the challenge, but by far the most complex half. A small part of the panel fell open, revealing a number pad and fingerprint scanner.

"Cyn, I need you to hack that. Even if it would recognize my fingerprint, I can't remove any part of my armor in a combat zone." He could do it himself, using one of the terminals, but it would take a while. It was quicker to have an AI's help.

_"Hold on. This might take a few seconds… nearly there… huh… ah! Got it!"_

The panel beeped and the indicator light turned green. The rest of the panel fell open to reveal another lock. A very high-security setup, it required two keys – and therefore two techs – to open, plus the fingerprints of both, and both had to be members of the very select group who were technically permitted access to the artifact. The outer lock was nearly impossible to pick without damaging it, and the inner lock _was_ impossible. Luckily for Zeke, he had in his possession a set of keys that had belonged to a techie he'd found dead a few corridors back.

The difficulty was in finding the correct key for the lock. Every lock that required a physical key opened to the same _kind_ of key with the same physical profile – but each key had its own unique electronic signature which was required to release the tumblers. One incorrect try and the whole thing would lock down tight until someone performed an override. Zeke had no interest in battling with the outer lock _again_, so while he could easily override the shutdown system, he paused and thought for close to a minute.

Finally, he remembered that the techie he'd taken these keys off used the one with the red fob for this panel. He inserted it into the lock and turned. The inner door swung open at long last. Zeke swiped the artifact in its protective tube out of the safe and slipped it into one of the hardcases he had fitted to his armor. He reached back over his shoulder for his assault rifle, which was empty, and reloaded with his last clip.

"I don't suppose there's some ammo in here?" he wondered aloud, casting his eyes over the labels on each crate. Nothing was ever as labeled but if he could find a crate that was labeled 'Ammunition' he would know if there was any chance of finding any in here.

_"The manifest says yes. You'll find it's experimental and not ready for field testing yet."_

"Beggars can't be choosers. I'm almost clean out." He began rooting through crates for anything resembling ammunition, praying as he did so for something that would actually fit his rifle. It wasn't _that_ custom it couldn't take standard AR rounds but all too often, Zeke got to the ammo crates after someone else had already claimed all the useful stuff. Sometimes he wished he'd chosen a different specialization – something with 'niche' weapons, like sniping or heavy weapons – purely because then, he'd have a chance at gathering his own ammo, instead of having to rely on the ammo mule when there was one.

_"I found it,"_ Cyn said, highlighting a crate in his HUD. _"That's full. Every round in that crate will fit into an MA5B. Don't let the Marines use it."_

"Sure thing. I'll load up, then I need you to open the door for me."

_"Once more unto the breach!"_ Cyn declared happily.

"Something like that."

* * *

**AN: meeehhh. FLUFF FLUFF FLUFF. Ugh. Oh well. Some Jeod-perspective for you guys and hey, we finally know the full order of Team Platinum. Some more Zeke-perspective, too, because we needed that. Tis only fitting that the techie be the one to retrieve the artifact. Also. Cyn is weird. That is all.**

**I finished H4 in one sitting the other night so my muse is going strong-ish for now. Hopefully it stays strong while I work my way up to Legendary. I'm a geek/gamer but not especially good at it - though I found Easy to be too easy so maybe there is hope yet for this wannabe.**

**As always please review! Let me know what you like, what you don't like, what you want to see in future chapters, etc. If you see any spelling/grammar/continuity errors, do tell me. I've already noticed a few [not in this chapter] but can't be bothered correcting them unless they're bothering someone else as well.**

**Characters/story are mine. Halo is not.**


	17. Ch 16

"Yes, General. Thank you, sir." Eli kept his voice polite and level, but he couldn't keep the frown off his face. Not for the first time, he was glad he had a mirrored faceplate. "Angel Team out."

Of course Anderson's response had been that everything was fine and the Spartans should focus on repelling and or eliminating the Covenant boarding parties. _Of course_. Anderson was not the sort of person who admitted defeat. But one UNSC destroyer – even a destroyer as high-tech and powerful as the _Devastation_ – was not enough to stand up to the Covenant in a space battle.

Eli sincerely hoped that either the Covenant would get bored and leave – unlikely – or backup would arrive _soon_. Here in the outer colonies, the first option was actually more likely than the second.

"What did he say?" Nate asked.

"He _says_ the situation is under control. He _says_ we've got nothing to worry about. I'm almost certain he's lying." Eli sighed. The Covenant onboard weren't letting up. They were still coming in waves and those waves weren't dwindling in numbers _or_ in force. It was only a matter of time before they sent Hunters again.

And the Marines weren't going to hold out forever. They had already suffered heavy losses.

The deck shuddered again, more violently this time. Several Marines actually fell to their knees.

"Well that can't be anything _but_ a plasma torpedo," Corey commented calmly. "Glad the _Devastation_'s so tough."

"That's the beauty of destroyers," Nate said, not so much as glancing away from the extra fortifications he was building. "Anderson'll drop their shields sooner or later and once he does, they're in for a hell of a surprise."

"This reminds me of the first time we fought the Covenant," Jeod commented. "We didn't freak out because we didn't have _time_. If we weren't fighting, we were strengthening the defenses of our position. I don't think we've ever been quite this busy since. Don't get me wrong, we've had our frantic moments, but those usually directly coincided with a fresh wave of Covie troops."

"Mmh. We've got incoming. Another wave. I hear Hunters. Platinum Four, do you have sufficient rockets?"

Leo nodded. "Plenty. Two's got some, as well."

Nobody noticed the door behind them turn green. When it chimed, they all glanced at it to see Zeke emerge carrying a crate full of ammo.

"I have it," the tech said, "and this should help us fight the Covenant."

Jeod smiled. Finally, some more ammo. He was running a little low for both his weapons. He left the plasma turret to stock up and noticed Eli take up position manning the turret. As he returned and Eli relinquished the position again, Jeod spotted the contacts on his motion tracker, and heard Nate suck in a breath.

"Brace yourselves! This is gonna be heavy! Eyes out, all sides, stay in cover where you can." The Lieutenant Commander was every bit the leader of this troupe, regardless of what the rest of the ragtag bunch might have had to say on the matter. Jeod submitted to the instinct to follow the strongest leader, and hunkered down just as the enemy troops came into view.

Almost immediately the air was crisscrossed with plasma and Needler fire, and an instant later the human projectile weapons joined in the fray. Jeod had a fleeting thought that this was a valuable trust building exercise, then put trust to the back of his mind and concentrated on what was in front of him. He hosed the enemy troops with plasma fire and watched them fall.

A good portion of the Grunts broke ranks and tried to run. Jeod gunned them down mercilessly, barely noticing the Spartans at his sides as Zeke and Eli crouched low, barely out of cover enough to fire, and assisted.

"Did I miss much?" Zeke asked.

"Nothing especially interesting," Eli replied. "Just more Covenant throwing themselves at us like they _want_ us to win. They're reverting back to the old tactic of using Grunts for cannon fodder to try and get us to use up all our ammo. Platinum Two and Four are both covering the aft flank with their rocket launchers – we've got Hunters over there."

"And more coming on this side," Jeod said, spotting the walking tanks at the back of this wave.

"Did someone say _more_ Hunters?" Corey asked. "_Awesome_."

_-LATER-_

Lin didn't mind sitting in cover, tending to the injured. She wasn't as good in a fight as the others, and it gave her time to wrap her head around the fact that the Covenant had attacked. She could see the tension in Nate's shoulders from here and knew he was terrified of a repeat of the disaster last year, more so now that two members of Angel Team were out injured.

Cas's injuries were life-threatening. Lin kept a close eye on his vitals, making sure he didn't suddenly up and die. She'd seen it a thousand times with Marines. They held on for as long as they could and then all of a sudden they were just _gone_. It was awfully sad how easy it was to be sucked in to thinking someone was out of the woods only to lose them because of a moment's distraction.

One particularly tough Marine kept muttering that he was fine and wanted to get back into the fight. Lin had to smile at that. That one had the attitude of a Spartan, if not the physical attributes and crazy intelligence. His hands and forearms were burned badly and he _still_ yearned for the kill.

For the tenth time in as many minutes, Lin spoke up, voice soft and patient. "If I could allow it, I would, Marine. You're one tough sonuvabitch. Unfortunately for both of us the procedure is clear, and you're going to have to be patient. For everyone's benefit, could you please rein in the complaints?"

"Yeah, sure, of course," the Marine said, also for the tenth time in as many minutes. Lin wanted to sigh in frustration but she refused to let her irritation show. Difficult patients were the bane of her life.

As much as they annoyed her-

"We've got incoming," Nate said, interrupting her thoughts. "Friendlies this time. Only four of them – Marines, I'm pretty sure – but every soldier makes a difference."

"Well, they chose precisely the wrong time," Eli commented. "We've got another wave incoming."

"_Another_ wave? Shit, man, they just don't let up!" a Marine exclaimed.

"We have to get moving, and soon," Nate said, agreeing with what everyone was thinking but wasn't game to say. "Angel Three, what's the status on the injured?"

"We're green to move them all," Lin said, checking each injured soldier over as she spoke. "Most of them can move under their own steam." Cas stirred. Lin blinked a few times, then added, "Four's coming round. If we give them all a few more minutes he should be able to keep up of his own accord."

"DIE, Covenant scum!" a Marine bellowed, and started firing, immediately followed by everyone else. Lin just kept to cover and kept moving from injured soldier to injured soldier, making sure they were all ready to move out when the time came. One Marine grabbed her arm. She recognized him as the youngest member of Fireteam Foxtrot. Barely out of boot camp, that one, but tough, loyal, and promising.

"Please," the kid said, "please let me fight."

"I'm sorry, I can't," Lin said, hoping she wouldn't have to explain the concept to _yet another_ Marine.

"It's okay. It's not your fault. Damn procedure."

She let out a soft laugh. "Damn procedure to Hell. Along with these Covenant. And probably us as well."

"You wouldn't go to Hell," the Marine told her. "You're too _good_. Too pure."

"Didn't you know? That's where Spartans go to regroup." Religious Marines always made for entertaining conversation. Normally, Lin would have teased him until he blushed and looked away, but this one was too cute to tease. He was like a puppy. All eager to prove himself, and loyal to a fault. "To Hell and back every day. It's not our job to jump feet first into Hell… _our_ job is to make sure it's crowded when we get there, and more crowded when we get home."

"I heard your home is here. On the _Devastation_."

Lin wanted to smile at the Marine but there was no point with her faceplate in the way. "We have been stationed here for a long time, kid, but as for any sort of a home… we don't really have one." _Not anymore, at least. Home was glassed years ago._

"I'm sorry, ma'am."

"Don't be. We don't need a home."

"With respect, ma'am, everyone needs a home."

Lin touched the Marine's shoulder lightly and moved on, smiling. He had no idea how right he was, but he also had no idea that 'home' was where the rest of the team was, at least for Lin.

Finally, the fighting let up, and for once there were no new casualties for Lin to treat. Cas grunted and then mumbled something about a sword.

"It's right there on your hip," Lin told him, moving over to sit near her team-mate.

"Armor… half my armor's gone…"

"We had to remove it… you should see the state of it, Cas, it's a miracle you're still alive. I don't think you even noticed most of the hits you took fighting that Elite. Zeke says he can fix it but it'd be quicker to write it off and have Engineering make you a new set."

Cas struggled to sit up. Lin helped him.

"Repairs? How can repairs take longer than a whole new suit?"

"The type of damage it took, Cas… if we had the spare parts, it would be easy, but the _Devastation_ hasn't done a resupply run since last time we had to rebuild someone's armor."

"Can I fight?"

Lin smiled, amused. That was so _Cas_. "If you take it easy for a few days, you'll be back at optimum fitness faster."

"Hm," Cas said, taking it in. "I won… right? I remember winning."

"Trust me, you should see the other guy. Compared to him, you've barely got a bruise."

"It wasn't overkill."

Lin nodded. "I know. I heard you tell Nate that it was the best fight you'd ever had. Coming from _you_, that's saying something."

"I… said that?"

"Yes… you said that."

"Wow. I really must have been delirious." Cas coughed out a laugh. "It was a good fight. The best I've had? No. But a damn good fight."

Lin nodded, and glanced over at Nate, who was getting more and more uptight by the second. "Think you can walk? We have to get moving soon… Six has the artifact so, sooner or later, we have to get to a position where it's impossible to flank us. Nate wants to get us to the bridge, as Anderson ordered, and kill the hell out of anything that tries to stand in our way."

"Even if the answer was no, I'd say yes," Cas reminded her. "Don't let him put me ahead of all these people, Lin… the needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few."

"You'd be better off talking to Eli about that," Lin said with a sigh. It was _Eli_'s job to speak up if the leader was about to make a decision that would negatively impact the mission. Not hers.

"I don't think so, Lin." Cas started to get up. "He listens to _you_. He might have chosen Eli as Two, but you're the one he listens to."

Lin was on her feet in a flash ready to help her team-mate.

"We're Oscar Mike?" Nate asked without turning to look at them.

"We're Oscar Mike," Lin confirmed. "Marines, on your feet, NOW!"

_-MEANWHILE-_

General Hank James Anderson sighed and rubbed his temples. This battle, while not an unheard-of circumstance, was unusual all the same. He had Covenant forces banging on the door to _his_ bridge, and a cruiser dominated the viewport, its shields flaring every second or two as the _Devastation_'s impressive arsenal assaulted it.

Covenant cruisers did not send boarding parties. There was only one answer to the question of why this time was different – _the artifact_ – which made it all the more important that he keep his ship 'afloat'.

"Hull integrity of sections Delta and Zulu compromised! We've lost the entirety of sections Winter and Charlie, sir!"

"Then there's only one thing to be done," Anderson said. "Hit them with everything we have, Lieutenant Collins. Drop that shield even if it kills us."

"Sir!"

Anderson rolled his shoulders and fished in his pocket for a cigar. Smoking was strictly banned on his bridge but to hell with it, _he_ was the one who had made that rule. He could break it if he wanted. He lit it using an archaic gas lighter and took a long draw. Hank wasn't a smoker, not anymore, unless he was extremely stressed.

"Christpher," he said, addressing the shipboard AI.

_"Yes, General?"_ Christopher appeared above his projector. The AI had chosen a holographic form that fit his name perfectly, the form of a nineteenth-century English police officer. Anderson remembered being told once that the colloquial term was 'bobby'.

"Where are those Spartans?"

_"Section Echo, sir, presently vacating a defensive position at the door to Engineering. Andromeda tells me they are on their way to Section Alpha, and the bridge. They have with them Fireteam Foxtrot… and the artifact."_

"Finally. Assess the chances of them making it here alive."

_"Approximately sixty-one-point-three-four percent if all Covenant forces remain where they are. If the Covenant concentrate on the artifact, which my estimates suggest will be their course of action, the Spartans' chances of surviving drastically reduce to just five-point-one-eight percent. The Covenant forces onboard the _Devastation_ are, as you know, impressive in strength and number. Concentrated on just ten Spartans – one of whom is badly injured – and one fireteam of Marines, the force is… devastating."_

"They've faced worse and survived. I sure hope they can do it again. They're our only hope."

"Sir! Enemy shields just went down!"

"Hit them with the MAC!" Anderson ordered. "Hit those bastards hard, right where it hurts!"

_"Calculating firing vector… programming. Aiming main cannon. Charge at fifty percent. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty. Ninety-five. One hundred percent. Firing!"_

Anderson felt the cannon fire. It thumped through the whole destroyer, making the floor vibrate. As he watched through the main viewport, a red fireball appeared on the skin of the enemy cruiser, which was then overtaken by a larger blue one that indicated the MAC round had struck a vital plasma supply. More explosions blossomed across the Covenant ship, and then the biggest of them all spread from the center outwards.

The _Devastation_ shuddered as pieces of Covenant ship impacted her hull, but she held, and only a few new alarms were set off.

_"Slipspace rupture detected."_

"Get us the hell out of here, Christopher! _Before_ they arrive!"

_"Calculating vector for a blind jump, roger. Spinning up slipspace drive. Entering slipspace in five…"_

Anderson's cigar fell from his mouth as the _Devastation_ jolted through the transition. Slipspace transitions were never smooth. As they went, this one wasn't too bad. Nobody had lost their footing.

"How long will we be in slipspace?"

_"Eight days four hours thirty minutes and twenty six seconds, sir. By the way… I don't think that was another Covenant ship we jumped away from. It had a distinctly human signature. It was probably rebels."_

"All the same we needed to get out of there," Anderson said. "The Insurrection is no pushover. We've taken too much damage. Bring up a schematic and highlight affected areas."

Christopher did so. The damaged areas of the _Devastation_ were comparatively actually quite small, considering she had twenty-six sections, all of which were reasonably large, and only four of them were damaged in any significant manner. He highlighted a few places where minor damage had been done, as well, and still the damage made up less than five percent of the destroyer's total mass.

The AI made a point to check Section Echo's proximity to Section Alpha in the schematic, and the best route between the Spartans' last known location and the bridge. He used the ships onboard sensors, and the security cameras, to track enemy troops within spitting distance of that route.

The statistics looked bad, but the Spartans were tough, and Christopher had been wrong about them several times before. He didn't _think_ they would survive, but he hoped this was another of those occasions where he was wrong.

All he could do to help out was to guide the auto-turrets, rather than allow them to formulate their own firing vectors. The turrets' programming was very good, so it wasn't much, but it was something.

Christopher felt a little better knowing he was doing _something_ to help.

* * *

**AN: blehh not happy with this one. There's not much Nate in it, and I'm not totally sure I like Anderson ending up being more than a filler character. But it's late, I'm tired, and this is already a day behind schedule, so you get what you get.**

**As always please review!**

**Halo isn't mine. Story and characters are.**


	18. Ch 17

"Are they throwing _everything_ at us?" a Marine wondered.

Nate smiled to himself and pulled a plasma grenade off his "grenade belt", priming it as he did so. A moment later he threw it with all his strength at an Elite, sending it towards the target at such speed the enemy had no time to dodge. It stuck, then exploded.

"I wouldn't be surprised if they were," Eli commented. "They want that artifact… they want it bad… and they know it's not in Engineering any more. Logic indicates it's with us, and they have some pretty good sensors to confirm that."

The _Devastation_ jolted, a different kind of shudder to what had been going on before. Nate blinked. Slipspace. They weren't scheduled to jump for another few days yet. Either Anderson had decided to just get the hell out, or something strange was going on.

"We're in slipspace," Zeke observed. "I wonder why?"

"My thoughts exactly," Nate said. "Have Cyn find out."

"Yes, sir!"

Nate nodded his approval, keeping up his impressive rate of fire. The BR-55 he'd swiped from the corpse of yet another Marine allowed him the precision he so loved, and was flexible enough for use close-up as well. It was the best weapon for the job. And it took the same caliber as an MA5B assault rifle, which meant ammunition was plentiful.

A Marine sprinted forward, keeping an admirably level head considering he had a plasma grenade stuck to it. Nate watched helplessly as the soldier ran into the enemy lines – Elites and Jackals leapt away from him – and then the grenade exploded. There was nothing that could have been done for that soldier. Nate briefly mourned the loss of a soldier level-headed enough to recognize his own doom and do something constructive with it, but the situation demanded it be just that – brief – because there was absolutely no time to waste on counting every death.

"I'll make sure he is remembered for his actions," he heard his own voice say.

"Thank you, Spartan," the Sergeant in charge of Foxtrot said quietly.

Nate nodded, but said nothing, instead concentrating on dropping as many Covenant as he could. The corridor was soon clear once more, and he led the group onwards. They'd had enemies come at them from all directions, and as the ranks thinned, it got more and more difficult to protect the injured. There were less than a score of Marines left in the party, and while he had nine fully operational Spartans plus the injured Cassiel, it wasn't enough.

He paused to loot a few grenades off the bodies of some Grunts, indicating that the others should do the same. It was getting more difficult to fend off the enemy and explosives would make the job easier. Once his grenade belt was full again, he waited until the rest of the party straightened, then moved on once more.

With three Spartans at the front, two at each side, and two at the back, the formation was as well-defended as Nate could make it. The injured were in the middle, and Cas carried the ammunition crate as he marched, in no fit state to do anything else but determined to have some role in the defense of the group.

"Andi," Nate said, "scan the ship for enemies."

_"The whole ship?"_

"Obviously. I want to know what we're dealing with."

_"Scanning… fifty more Elites varying in rank from Minor to Zealot and accompanying Jackal and Grunt squads, four Hunter pairs, two Jackal Marksman squads. Indeterminate number of Spec-Ops Elites; I cannot see cloaked enemies on the security cameras and sensor data is inconclusive."_

"Snipers… where are they?"

_"Around the next bend, two hundred yards farther down the corridor, you will find the first squad. The second squad is in Section Alpha, not far outside the bridge."_

"Thank you, Andromeda. Angel Two, Platinum Leader, with me. The rest of you, hang back until my go-ahead."

"Sir!" the Marines bellowed. The two Spartans flicked their acknowledgement lights green.

Nate deliberated as he ran, unsure whether to use the battle rifle or the S2 sniper rifle attached to his back. The range was closer than was ideal for the sniper rifle, so he decided on the battle rifle.

"We have snipers around this next bend," he told the two Spartans who ran at his sides. "Just one squad, but we can safely assume there are Elites not far away. Caution is advised."

Jeod and Eli nodded their understanding. Eli reached back for the DMR at his back, and Jeod reloaded his battle rifle.

They came to the corner. Nate pressed himself against the wall and moved carefully sideways, ready to swing around and shoot. Jeod and Eli hung back a little, the former following the latter's example. Eli knew Nate's tactics inside and out.

Nate pivoted on his forward foot, leading with his weapon, and in the same motion, aimed and fired. A Jackal fell, dead, and as Nate lined up another for his next shot, Eli and Jeod moved out of cover as well, also firing. Within moments, every Jackal was dead.

Something moved, barely visible, a hundred yards closer in. Nate instinctively fired at it, and the shape of an Elite shimmered silver. Under the combined weight of two battle rifles and a DMR, its camo module overloaded, and a moment later someone hit it with a headshot and it died. Its partner started firing, and Eli flung a grenade at the place the plasma was coming from. The pulsing blue ball stuck, hanging in mid-air, and then exploded. The camo failed and pieces of Elite flew in every direction.

Nate consulted his motion tracker. They might have been cloaked from anything that relied on _visual_ means, but his motion tracker would pick up an Elite easily, even if it was standing stock still. If it was breathing, Nate's tracker could see it. There was nothing there, not within the thirty meters it was capable of sensing to.

"See any shimmers? Anything at all?"

"Nothing, sir," Eli said. "Not even heat haze from a vent."

"Good. All clear. All troops move up."

"Sir!" the Marine Sergeant said over the comms, confirming the order.

_-LATER-_

Zeke wondered how long it would take for the Covenant to figure out that _he_ had the artifact. Thus far they were not concentrating on any one member of the dwindling party, which was rather stupid of them, considering there was only _one_ artifact, only _one_ Spartan had gone into Engineering, and if they concentrated enough fire on the one soldier, they would have a chance at taking possession of it.

He supposed it was just as well, but something sat badly with him. The Covenant weren't _that_ stupid.

_"I finally talked Christopher into telling me what's going on,"_ Cyn said inside his head. _"The Covenant cruiser was destroyed, and then sensors indicated a slipspace rupture close by. Anderson ordered a blind jump. Christopher thinks it was an Insurrectionist vessel… it had a human signature, but wasn't UNSC."_

"But Anderson ordered the jump anyway?"

_"Christopher didn't get to the 'not Covenant' part, and our chances of taking out a second Covenant vessel are almost nil at this point in time. The weapons tech overloaded the weapons systems during his final assault on the Covenant cruiser we destroyed. We will be coming out of slipspace not far from Haven…"_

"I want to take a Pelican planetside. Put in a request. It's been too long."

_"Zeke…"_

"What is it?" Zeke controlled his posture carefully, hiding the jolt of panic in the pit of his stomach. That tone never boded well.

_"Haven was attacked two and a half years ago by Insurrectionist troops. The facility was destroyed."_

"The facility isn't what I want to see."

_"Anderson will never allow it. The planet is crawling with rebels even now."_

"Just put in the request."

Cyn sighed, but it was her 'oh fine' sigh. Zeke smiled and relayed the important details to Nate.

"Come again, Six? Did you say _Haven_?"

"I did." Zeke watched Nate's body language and was amused to see his leader unconsciously straighten in surprise.

"Think there's any chance of a visit?"

_"I already put in a request,"_ Cyn cut in.

"Contact!" Eli exclaimed, putting an end to that conversation for the time being.

Zeke's eyes locked onto the Covenant forces ahead. He did a quick mental headcount of both sides. Twenty Marines, including some nine or ten injured, and nine operational Spartans, plus Cas. Five Elites, each in command of six Grunts and two Jackals. That made forty-five enemies to maybe twenty useful UNSC soldiers. They'd come up against worse odds.

Unfortunately there were soldiers in his field of fire, and he couldn't get a clean shot, so Zeke had to lob grenades. He threw both his frag grenades and the plasma grenade he'd managed to pick up, still didn't have a clean shot, and had to stand and watch. His plasma grenade stuck on a Grunt's head and in an unusual display of intelligence it ran at the UNSC forces, but a Marine dropped it with a quick headshot and instead of causing havoc among his allies, he watched the explosion collect a few other Grunts, a Jackal, and one of the three Minor Elites.

The Zealot Elite roared a furious challenge. It switched out to its energy sword and charged. Its shields flared but held. Zeke watched as it got closer and closer, until finally, Corey dropped its shields with a shotgun blast, and a Marine felled it with a burst of battle rifle fire to the head.

Everyone switched their attention back to the remaining Grunts and Jackals. It was fairly standard procedure to take out the weakest enemies first. A gun was a gun, after all, and to reduce the number of guns pointed at you was to increase your chances of victory. Not only that, but it was the Grunts that held the Needlers, and everyone knew a Needler supercombine was just as deadly as a grenade blast.

Finally, the soldiers in Zeke's field of fire got out of the way, and he entered the fray with gusto, firing in controlled bursts to keep the kickback from making his assault rifle inaccurate. He killed a few Grunts and the last two Jackals, then concentrated on the Major Elite. His rifle clicked empty just as the Elite's shields failed. He reloaded but wasn't quite fast enough to take the glory of the kill, which went instead to Brent. The last two Minors fell to the combined fire of two groups of three Marines.

Before the enemies' bodies even hit the ground, Nate gave the hand signal to move out, and the group started down the corridor again. Zeke made quiet note of the moment they passed through a door that let them into Section Alpha and wondered what had become of the young Marine who Nate had taken under his wing. Corporal Taylor… a talented, promising young soldier, worth a second thought where the Spartans simply ignored and forgot about so many.

Zeke found the pace too slow. The Marines weren't physically capable of moving as quickly as a Spartan team. Speed was of the essence – they were exposed in these corridors – and it grated on Zeke that he had to move so _slowly_. At least now they were in Section Alpha, and within ten minutes' run from the bridge.

_"You have to move more quickly than this!"_ Cynisca said on an open comm channel. Zeke silently agreed with her, and sensed her pleasure at that fact.

"We're moving as fast as we can," Nate said. "Find me a way to make these Marines faster, I'll take it. Otherwise, be quiet and deal with it."

_"You don't understand! I'm monitoring the Covenant battlenet… the Zealot I think is the highest ranked Elite here just put out an order to hit you with everything they've got. They're assembling as I speak. If you don't get to the bridge _now_, I shudder to think what will happen."_

Zeke suppressed a shudder. That was not a good sign. With fifty Elites and their attached Grunt and Jackal teams, plus snipers and Spec-Ops Elites, and Hunters, the Covenant could do a lot of damage. The Spartans might survive, if they were lucky, but the Marines didn't stand a chance.

Based on his posture, Nate was thinking the same thing. Zeke watched the other Spartan go through his "stages of decision-making". Despair, determination, frustration, hope… and soon would come the decision itself, right when all seemed lost. It was Nate's pattern, and he stuck to it with almost painful reliability.

_-MEANWHILE-_

Christopher concentrated as much of his processing power as he could on assisting the Spartans. Part of him remained focused on the _Devastation_ and her path through slipspace, but the rest was concerned wholly with helping to eliminate the Covenant forces onboard the destroyer.

Unfortunately they kept destroying and disabling the autoturrets, which Christopher found incredibly frustrating, but he could hinder them in other ways. He locked doors, completely shut down the network of maintenance tunnels, and otherwise got in the way. He managed to kill a few, crushing some Grunts with a blast door and taking out others – Grunts, Jackals and Elites alike – with the autoturrets in the moments before the Covenant could destroy them.

They all seemed to be headed to the one place, which concerned him. If the Covenant could get a united front going, the Spartans would struggle, and the Marines with them would surely perish.

The AI sensed the presence of another, a familiar signature he had come to like. Beauseant.

"Help me with this," he said to the other.

"Of course," Beauseant responded, and they started causing havoc. Beau managed to bring some turrets back online, and felled a Hunter before the Covenant had a chance to realize. Christopher crushed two Elites – one a Major – with a blast door.

The Covenant would not win. Not if he had any say in the matter.

_-MEANWHILE-_

Alpha trotted along with the formation, distinctly uncomfortable. She preferred to work alone. Even her cover was essentially a loner now – there was no team, just Ariane and partner Trip, who more often than not was working Solo anyway – and it was frankly difficult to work with a Spartan team that, between its members, displayed _every single sign_ of a soldier about to go rogue.

The explosives expert was the biggest part of that. He was a loose cannon and seemed to be looking for an excuse. The others, though, all showed signs as well. Particularly the leader. Alpha had observed his inconsistent sleep patterns with concern, and he always woke badly, indicating constant nightmares. _And_ he seemed to have some anger management issues. Of the six of them the medic was the only one Alpha thought she might be able to trust.

Platinum was a different story. She knew Jeod and his lads well. She was glad to have Leo at her side as she covered the starboard flank of the formation. If she had to work with someone other than Trip, Leo was the best choice.

She considered the AI Cynisca's warning. They _did_ need to move faster. They also needed to hinder the Covenant, which Alpha suspected was what Beau was doing at that moment. She found herself missing his constant chatter in her mind, but told herself it was because he was focusing all his processing power on something more important.

Alpha pulled up TACMAP, keeping the window to a small square superimposed over her motion tracker. It would show the locations of enemies as related to the walls and doors, and would tell her if a contact was something to worry about or ignore. The dot in the middle of her tracker – the one that represented herself – turned into a little arrow. She smiled as the doors marked on her map turned from green to red, indicating someone had locked them.

"Lock down everything but the route to the bridge," she ordered Beau softly.

_"I'm on it. You'll still face some resistance, but I think I can keep the bulk of the Covenant troops off you for long enough…"_

"Thanks, Beau. Relay that to Angel Leader for me."

Beau made a sound to the affirmative. Alpha smiled to herself and kept up with the group, silent now but for the faint sound of her boots against the floor. The high-tech soles allowed her to move in total silence if she was trying to be quiet, but at a run, they couldn't quite cancel out the _tap-tap-tap_ the _floor_ made.

"Alpha…" Nate said slowly.

"Yes?"

"Thank you. We need all the help we can get."

Alpha smiled. "Not with four AIs on the case."

"Four?"

"Christopher. Wouldn't _you_ want to defend yourself, if you were a shipboard AI and your ship was under attack?"

"Of course I would, but I don't like to make assumptions on the actions of others. Particularly AIs."

Alpha met that statement with a mental nod, carefully controlling her body language to hide her thoughts from the older Spartan. That deep distrust he kept betraying when artificial intelligence came up as a topic of conversation… it both concerned her, and reminded her of herself.

It was never a good sign when a Solo started to identify with someone who showed signs of possibly going rogue, particularly when the similarity was one that was often a sign. She made a mental note to undergo a psychiatric evaluation when she got back to Reach. When it came to Solos going rogue, prevention was _far_ better than cure. She had learned that the hard way with Agent Lima.

"Contact!" a Marine barked from the back. The entire formation about-faced. Alpha saw a shimmer by a wall, and another shimmer hiding in the haze from an overheated door mechanism. She aimed for the one by the door, figuring it was smarter and therefore the bigger threat, and let off a few DMR shots before anyone else realized what was going on. By that time her target was in easy view and three more shots finished it off – two to down its shields and one neat headshot to kill it.

She switched her attention to the other which had by now moved and was firing on the formation. The others had it well in hand so she stood by and watched as the combined efforts of five or six Marines and Corey and Brent – the two Spartans at the back – overloaded its camo and dropped its shields. A sniper rifle shot streaked above the UNSC formation then and turned the enemy's head into bloody confetti.

"Mine," Eli said, tone distinctly smug.

"Not fair," a Marine complained good-naturedly. "We had him!"

* * *

**AN: This one's quite a bit overdue, sorry guys! I've been really sick. Some more Nate, a bit more Zeke, and a bit more Alpha in this one. We won't see any 'Ariane' though - even though Angel Team knows who she is - because this is an Alpha mission. There's a lot of backstory on the Alpha side of things that will eventually be explained in "Agent Alpha" but I don't have any muse for that at present.**

**This is REALLY drawing out, I thought I'd have the whole ****_Devastation_**** drama played out by now and be onto the "main" complication of the story... but nooo. Too many sub-plots. I was aiming for 20 chapters but it's looking like running through at least 30, probably more. That's ok - the goal was a minimum not an exact!**

**As always please review! Let me know what you like, what you don't like, what you want to see in future chapters, and if you see any spelling/grammar/continuity issues. I think I have it all nailed down now so there shouldn't be any more continuity problems with the team ordering and member numbers but even so... let me know.**


	19. Ch 18

"Tangos, starboard corridor," Zeke commented. "Cyn says that door won't hold out much longer."

Nate nodded his understanding and signaled the group to halt a safe distance from the indicated door. They'd lost a few more Marines, but the group was still at an operational strength of approximately twenty soldiers in all – the fresh casualties were all from the group of injured they were trying to protect.

_"I have to close a blast door once you advance, to keep the Covenant from using this door as a way to come up behind,"_ Andi warned everyone. _"Even as we wait for them to breach the doors, their force grows. It currently stands as five Elites, including two Zealots, plus attached Grunt and Jackal squads, and one Hunter pair. They will likely send the Hunters through first."_

"Spartans, up front. Marines, watch our six."

"Sir!" the Marines bellowed. The Spartans all responded with nods and green acknowledgement lights, and everyone moved to take their newly assigned positions.

Nate took point, displacing Eli, whose shoulders shifted in protest. Nate ignored him.

_CLANG-BANG-BOOM._ The doors held, _just_, but the series of impacts set off an alarm klaxon. Nate shifted his weight, uncomfortable. The worst thing possible in a combat zone was to stand and wait with alarms blaring all around. Nate was especially uncomfortable in the knowledge that the only thing separating him and his team from a Hunter pair and multiple high-ranking Elites was a door that would give way any second.

A blue explosion blossomed and the door blew out. As the flames dissipated, two Hunters shuffled through, crouched behind their shields.

Two rockets streaked forth from each of Leo and Corey's launchers. Nate braced himself for the shockwave – the Hunters were really too close for this tactic – and grunted as it thumped through his body, despite the gel layer in his armor. A couple of Marines let out faint cries of pain, but both were already injured. The shockwave would have irritated their wounds, not caused more. It wasn't quite _that_ close.

Before anybody could blink one of the Zealots and its attached Grunt and Jackal squads emerged. Nate would have concentrated on the Grunts first, given the choice, but the Zealot Elite had already drawn its energy sword. If it got too close to his troops it would wreak havoc.

It charged. Nate's trigger finger twitched; his weapon fired, and the Elite's shields flared, but held. The rest of the troops concentrated their fire on the Zealot at that moment. Bullets ricocheted, some taking out Grunts or Jackals out of pure dumb luck, and Nate signaled his soldiers to fall back, firing with one hand as he did so. He, however, held his ground. That took some effort. It was tempting to retreat to maintain a safe distance.

The Elite was within sword-swing now. Nate growled and lunged forward, swinging his battle rifle with one hand and combat knife with the other – he wasn't quite sure how the knife had gotten into his hand – and felt, with some satisfaction, the battle rifle impact shields, which flickered and finally died. The knife followed a moment later, burying itself deep in the Zealot Elite's eye.

As the Elite's body fell, Nate ripped his knife free of the alien's skull, sheathed it, and leveled his rifle once more. He vaguely heard a Marine whispering to one of his comrades, something about "how the hell is he still alive?"

Nate frowned, and concentrated on the chatter for a moment.

"I don't know," a second Marine said.

"He's like a machine," the first murmured. "Not even bleeding. Maybe the stories are true."

That was when Nate finally felt the pain in his side. He realized with a surprised grunt that the Elite had landed a blow with its sword, and that the beeping in his ears was his shields-down alarm. He wasn't bleeding because energy swords cauterized the wounds they created, in the process of creating them. Soon the adrenaline kicked in and the pain disappeared again. With it went the fog, and he was back to full operational capacity by the time the next Elite emerged. It was the other Zealot, and was closely followed by two Majors and a Minor. Plus their attached squads.

"Concentrate on the Zealot," Nate ordered, taking action on his own order as he spoke. His Spartans started firing first, and then, a moment later, the Marines followed. This Zealot hung back, not as sword-happy, and fired blobs of bright blue-white plasma at the UNSC formation. This Zealot was smart.

But no match for nine Spartans and ten or eleven highly-professional Marines. Its shields fell within seconds and the Zealot Elite's body thudded to the floor a moment after that.

Nate switched his fire to a Grunt that had gotten a little too bold. A three-round burst to the head, and it fell dead. He picked them off one by one in the same manner, barely noticing his allies. Interestingly, the Marines had assimilated into the group as easily as if they themselves were Spartans, and worked as seamlessly and effectively as any soldiers Nate had ever worked with. While part of his mind contemplated that fact, the rest of him concentrated on the battle, and soon all the Grunts and Jackals, and the Minor Elite, were dead.

That left the two Majors. Nate put a waypoint over one.

"Spartans, concentrate on this Elite. Marines, the other one is yours."

"Sir, yes, sir!" the Marines bellowed. The Spartans wordlessly went about following the order.

Nate contributed battle rifle fire, but he didn't want this kill. It was high time he let someone else lead the kill count for a mission. _Besides,_ he thought, _I should let Lin treat my injury._

"Let me do something about that, Lead," Lin said, apparently reading his mind.

"Soon," he promised her, watching as both Major Elites' shields failed, and the aliens were ripped apart by the various assault weapons his troops carried.

"Move on up," Nate ordered, leading the formation through the corridor until he heard a blast door activate.

_"Warning, blast doors closing."_ The synthesized voice was oddly alien. Nate figured he'd been spending too much time with smart AIs. He was used to computer programs sounding human.

He belatedly gave the order to halt, and saw concern in the set of Lin's shoulders. It was matched in Eli's, as well. The Marines didn't notice – the pause would not even have registered in their minds.

Lin watched as Nate moved into the center of the formation. She knew he wasn't feeling the pain, but he was still moving in a somewhat guarded manner. Still moving like it hurt. The signs were subtle, but she knew what was normal for him, and this wasn't it.

His distraction was especially concerning – and especially dangerous. Nate was normally more vigilant, and much more efficient. Lin frowned and assessed the way her leader was moving, and the damage to his armor, to get an idea of how bad the injury was.

It didn't seem bad enough to warrant this distraction, but it needed to be sutured and dressed sooner rather than later so he didn't pull it wider. She was going to have to remove some of the plates of his armor to do that. That wasn't going to go down well, and Lin had no interest in having to deal with a moody Nate. He was grumpy enough as it was, with the whole thing with Raph and that Solo. The issue weighed on everyone's minds, and it was terrible for the team dynamic.

Lin shrugged it off. Something felt off, but something had felt off for a while. It wasn't her place to keep the team together mentally. Her job as a medic was to make sure everyone held together _physically_. Regardless, she still worried about the boys, especially Nate. And especially _now_.

Nate sat on the floor at her feet, glancing up at her in a wordless order to treat his wound. As if she needed to be ordered. Lin folded herself to the floor smoothly, hands going to work on removing the damaged armor plates before she was settled.

"Don't punch me," she said softly to her patient, over a closed comm channel.

"I won't," Nate promised. Lin heard him suck in a breath through clenched teeth as she slid the suture needle through his skin. She would have _liked_ to numb the area first, but she had a woefully small amount of medical supplies. She had started with what she had scrounged from various dead medics, and that sad supply had dwindled almost to nothing.

Lin's hands were quick and practiced. The sutures she made were very small and very tidy, and would minimize scarring, not that it really mattered considering all Nate's other scars. She could stitch up a wound in her _sleep_ neatly enough that most people wouldn't notice a scar… depending on the person she was stitching. Some people healed better than others, with less scarring.

As she worked, Lin watched with grim satisfaction as the edges of the wound came neatly together. The bulky armor had saved Nate's life – just a few millimeters deeper and the energy sword would have hit something vital – and not for the first time, Lin was thankful for MJOLNIR.

She tied off the last suture and got out of the way so Zeke could perform field repairs on Nate's damaged armor, making a mental note to talk to Nate about his nightmares and moodiness when they all had the time. Between Nate and Raph, the team was just waiting for a big blowup, and while she was no leader, Lin knew the last thing they could afford was for this strange tension to boil over.

There was a different kind of tension brewing, too, and it wasn't altogether unpleasant. Lin pondered the sensation, glad to have a moment to do so. As best she could determine, it was strictly between her and Nate. She thought it probably stemmed from the fact that he was more comfortable with her than the others. Lin knew she often intimidated them – and she knew she utterly terrified Raph – with her reactions.

Lin had always been 'touchy-feely' for a Spartan. Very emotional. She got attached to her patients, could count on one finger the number of deaths that had _not_ bothered her, and counter to everyone else's beliefs, the reason she wasn't as effective in a fight as the others was that she didn't like killing. Not because she was any less capable. The boys saw through her to some extent, but she hid her distaste extremely well. Nate was the only one who noticed, now. He 'commented' on it constantly in his body language.

Eli 'accidentally' bumped her shoulder, a subtle comforting gesture. "What is it?"

"I worry about him," Lin admitted.

Eli nodded. He didn't need to ask who. It was obvious. "We all do, Linny."

Lin straightened a little. Nobody had called her Linny in years. The last time was… she didn't want to remember. She didn't precisely want to _forget_, but she didn't want to remember. That Marine, all those years ago. The first patient she'd ever lost. She was almost sure she knew the veteran from somewhere, but she couldn't quite place him. _'Sooner or later we all die, Linny. Now you make sure not to give up before it's time, you hear? This old has-been's years past his sell-by date, but you, you're only a kid still. Linnybear, I-"_ he'd broken off, that old badass, and taken one final, rattling breath, then laid still. Lin could still see the life leave those teasing, belligerent black eyes.

"Reality to Lin, come in, Lin," Eli said, his smile evident in his amused tone.

"Memories…" she said softly, surprised at the sadness in her own voice.

"I know." Eli's tone was understanding, now. Lin smiled. Eli always understood everything, or at least tried to. Nate did, too, but better.

"Apparently Spartans can't make it to thirty-six without baggage," she said with a half-hearted laugh. "Although I wasn't even twenty when that old badass died in my field infirmary with my hands buried to the wrist in his abdomen, so I guess I don't really count."

"That _still_ bothers you?"

"You know me," Lin said. "I don't let go."

* * *

**AN: what's this, then? I do apologise, as ever, for how long this took, and how crappy it is.**

**Please review! I want to know your thoughts. Can't improve if I don't know what's wrong!**

**Halo isn't mine, characters and story are [barring, of course, the occasional mention of a canon... and maybe in the future the inclusion of a certain Spartan we all know and love? Perhaps a split-jaw or two? Who knows?]**


	20. Ch 19

Lin almost let herself relax. The bridge was within sight at last and all that stood between her – and the group – and her objective was what amounted to a token resistance. Her main concern was keeping the injured alive until they got through the Covenant line.

Then the Hunters stepped into view. Nate's naked surprise bothered her – normally he would have been able to warn them well before they came into contact with the walking tanks – but she tried not to let it show, or to let it affect her.

A pair of rockets streaked towards the Covenant troops, but the Hunters were too fast, and sidestepped. The rockets instead took out multiple Grunts, Jackals and Elites.

"Bad news," Corey said.

"We're out of rockets," Leo finished for his team-mate.

Lin swore under her breath. This was bad.

"Watch for assault cannon fire, and _don't get hit_," Nate ordered. "Angel Six, Platinum Two and Three, on me. We have to go in close. Everyone else, kill anything you can get a clear shot at."

_No. He'll get himself killed._ "Lead, with respect, you're injured. Let someone else lead the assault for once."

"Angel Three, you have a point. Two, take my place on Forward Squad."

Eli responded with a decisive nod and instantly started giving orders to Zeke, Corey and Brent. Lin was glad _someone_ was himself. The past few days might have been crazy but she felt like she didn't know the Spartans she had been working with for the past thirty years. That was a problem that ran deeper than just the stresses of the past few days. For the first time she could remember, Linriel had no idea what to do.

She pushed all thought to the back of her mind and concentrated on fighting. It was set to be a tense couple of days while they worked on eliminating all the Covenant forces aboard the _Devastation_; Lin would cope better with the stress and the killing if she refused to think about anything.

Especially Nate.

_-TWO DAYS LATER-_

Christopher was right. Haven _was_ crawling with rebels.

Nate's already-frayed nerves were suffering a degree of wear he couldn't remember ever having put them through before. He was nigh on jumping out of his own skin at the faintest noise – and to his ears, that was things nobody else could hear. It didn't help that Lin was avoiding his gaze again. That odd tension he kept feeling from her – and _because_ of her – came in waves and seemed directly related to whether she would look at him or not.

He noticed exhaustion weighing him down and ordered himself to wake up. When that didn't work he used his suit's systems to inject yet another wakeup stim, which _did_ help. He could only operate like this for a limited amount of time. It was a few days now since he'd had much more than a few minutes of unbroken sleep, between the Covenant, the rebels, and the nightmares. While he could function on very little sleep, even Spartans had their limits.

The stitches in his side kept tugging if he tried to move too quickly or lift anything that weighed too much. It was irritating. He was more than strong enough, more than agile enough, to do everything he attempted, and the sutures restricted that. He didn't dare do any of the _really_ heavy lifting, lest he pop a stitch. Lin would flip her lid if he did that.

A strong part of Nate's hyper-vigilance was the fact that he lacked two team members. Raph would be out for a few weeks because of his arm, and Cas was in the process of being put back together after his tangle with the Elite. While it was a relief not to have to babysit Raph, Nate found himself missing the security of having a heavy weapons expert on the team.

This was nothing unusual. Raph was constantly injured. It came with the territory. Nate had no idea why it was suddenly bothering him. The lack of Cas was a bigger concern but, again, nothing unusual.

He shrugged and pushed his concerns to the back of his mind, swinging easily over a tree trunk that would have left a Helljumper stumped. He heard his Spartans follow suit, and twenty yards behind him he could hear Platinum Team moving near-silently through the undergrowth.

Alpha was there somewhere as well, but she didn't appear on TACMAP, and Nate couldn't hear her anywhere. He decided it didn't matter.

"I remember this tree," Zeke commented, pausing at the base of a particularly tall, smooth-barked specimen. "Wonder if the cache is still up there?"

Nate shrugged. "Climb up and look if you like."

Zeke nodded cheerfully and started on his way up. Nate smiled, remembering the reason they had chosen that tree in the first place. Nobody else could climb it without specialist equipment. 'The cache' was most likely undisturbed, though if any of it was still usable, it would be a miracle.

Nate felt Lin's eyes on his back and was tempted to turn and ask her what was on her mind. Clearly _something_ was bothering her. She hadn't been herself since before the Covenant had boarded the _Devastation_.

"Oh, hey, it's all still here! Weapons, ammo, MREs, the works," Zeke said. Packages started dropping from the branches above. "All of the stuff we left up here, what is it now, twenty years ago? Sorry, Lin, the medical supplies are expired, but the rest of this is good."

"That's all right, I have plenty," Lin replied, a little distracted. Nate wondered again what was bothering her. Again, he controlled the urge to demand she explain.

Zeke landed cat-like and silent on the forest floor; despite the fact that each of them weighed half a metric ton or more, they could move with remarkable stealth.

"Let's get moving. Somehow I don't think our arrival here was random… and General Anderson wants us to find out what that artifact actually does. Especially since it started glowing."

"Don't forget the heat," Zeke added. "Hot, glowing, and I swear I felt it pulse in my hand just now. Like a heartbeat."

_"Best guess is that it has something to do with this world. According to my scans, Haven is hollow and while it supports life the planet itself seems to be non-organic,"_ Andromeda said, answering Nate's unspoken questions.

"Am I ever going to get used to having her in my head?" he muttered irritably.

"Nope," Zeke informed him. "It's still kinda weird to have Cyn. You'll learn to accept her eventually. I can't see you relying on Andromeda the way I rely on Cynisca, but hell, you're not a tech."

"Just as well you _are_," Nate retorted smoothly. "Can't rely on your _shooting_ to get us out of trouble!"

"Or on _your_ pathetic attempts at _engineering_!"

Nate smiled to himself. It was nice to have the team back to normal. This was the usual banter, and he found it served to ease his nerves a little… or a lot.

"Be glad _I'm_ the stealth expert and not Raph!" Eli joined in, voice playful.

"Whoa, ouch," Zeke complained suddenly, dropping the artifact. "What the hell?"

Nate could hear Zeke's gauntlet hissing. "What did it do?"

"It got hotter… burned my hand."

All eyes were on the artifact as the glow intensified and the forest floor smoked, threatening to ignite. Nate eyed it nervously, waiting for the moment when something bad would happen. Something bad _always_ happened.

He felt the ground tremble and watched as the ground opened up in front of him. The forest floor on the sections that opened did not succumb to gravity, and instead acted as if there were some kind of a retaining forcefield.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Alpha commented from somewhere behind him. Nate didn't shift his eyes from the opening chasm. Something flew up out of it, a round thing with a glowing light in the middle of it. Nate took a nervous step backwards.

"Greetings, Reclaimers!" it chirped cheerfully.

"Re… claimer?" Zeke said slowly. "Who the hell are you?"

"I am the Monitor of Forerunner Shield World designate Haven. My name is Failing Duty. And you know what _you_ are, and what you mean for my installation."

"Haven's the designation _we_ gave this planet," Lin commented softly.

"Yes – yes! You _do_ know! You _are_ the true Reclaimers. The last ones were utterly unworthy of the Mantle."

"Of the what?" Eli wondered.

"The Mantle – oh, but you know exactly what I am talking about, do you not? Come, come! I shall show you to the control center!"

Rings of golden light surrounded each of the Spartans. Nate just had time to glance uneasily at the light before a wave of nausea engulfed him – he swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat – and a brief flash of blackness gave way to unfamiliar surroundings. He sensed he was miles underground, though for all the universe this place looked a lot like the Haven he knew. The surface of what he now understood to be a hollow planet.

Nate glanced around to see the other Spartans – his own team, Platinum Team, and Agent Alpha – all looking around, each individual's body language indicating something different, from unease to wonder to awe. Lin took off her helmet as he watched her, tucking it under her arm. Nate suspected she was suffering from a worse case of nausea than he had just fought back, for it was against their training and their every instinct to remove any part of their armor in an unfamiliar and potentially hostile environment. He allowed himself to shrug, and left her be.

"Where have you taken us?" Zeke demanded. "What did you do? How did you do that?"

"One question at a time, please," the thing that called itself a Monitor replied placidly. "I have transported you as close to the control room as possible. Surely you know you are to release Haven's occupants?"

"What occupants might those be?" Nate let a hint of suspicion color his tone, just a fraction of the paranoia he felt. The Monitor's very presence set his teeth on edge, and each thing it said served only to confirm his bad feeling.

"Why, the last surviving Forerunners, of course. Haven shielded a small number of Forerunner scientists when the rings were activated."

"What rings?" Zeke said to Nate over a closed comm.

"I don't know. See if you can find any reference to any 'rings' in ONI's records. Forerunner, too. I want to know more than the fanatical yammering we hear from the damn Covenant."

"Yes, sir."

"Do you think the Forerunners are likely to be still alive?"

"No idea. Best to ask Lin, I think."

Nate nodded. The Monitor thing took the nod to be one of understanding.

"Excellent. You understand. Follow me." The levitating ball with the glowing eye suddenly took off. Nate leveled his rifle and set off after it, moving at a fast jog. The others fell into formation behind him. The one notable exception was Alpha, who insisted on running at his side. Nate did not miss the subtle sign that she neither trusted him nor respected him.

"I don't trust that Monitor," Alpha commented on an open comm. She clearly knew that Failing Duty could hear all the open comm chatter that went on; something in her body language told Nate she _wanted_ the thing to hear.

"I don't trust anything I don't know," Nate informed the Solo, half agreeing and half reminding her that he was still a little suspicious of her. "Unfortunately for us, it seems to hold all the cards. Best to keep it happy until we know what it's capable of."

"The artifact isn't glowing any more, by the way," Zeke said suddenly, as if he had only just realized.

"You mean the key?" Failing Duty said, through its constant tuneless humming. "Yes, the key. It only activates when it is near an opening."

"How near is near?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Doesn't matter," Zeke said cautiously. "I want to know. That not reason enough for you?"

The Monitor made a sound that was a good approximation of a sigh. "Approximately two million kilometers. You must understand that the Forerunners – my programmers – measure distance mainly in lightyears, so to them, this distance is negligible. Now that you are within Haven, beneath the surface as it were, the key will only activate once it is placed within the lock beam."

Nate tried to tune out the Monitor's humming as he walked, but it was utterly impossible. The damned thing kept changing its pitch, tone and volume, and each change was, to Nate and his 'perfect pitch', as jarring as an explosion by his ear. It was distracting and seriously irritating. He had been trained to be alert to change, and his years of experience backed that up. Change brought disaster. As did silence, but he could hear sounds around him which told him that if he could get the damned floating ball to shut up, he would be quite comfortable.

"Wish we'd been able to bring Raph," he muttered grumpily to himself, envisioning a few well-placed rockets doing enough damage to Failing Duty to destroy it. If not rockets, then blasts from a Spartan Laser.

"Oh dear," the Monitor said, pausing for a moment and then shooting off at high speed, so fast Nate's quick eyes barely registered the direction it went. He felt his stomach drop and a strong sense of impending disaster found him and rendered him momentarily breathless.

There wasn't time to spend longer than a moment on pondering that feeling of dread. Something unfamiliar and terrifying hurtled out of the forest, into the clearing in which Nate and his Spartans had paused. It was halfway across the space between tree line and soldiers before Nate's mind registered that he had to fire at it, and three-quarters of the way by the time his body responded. All of this happened in less than an eighth of a second.

It was on top of him before anyone else registered the threat and by that time, they were all too busy fighting the thing's friends to help Nate. He grunted and struggled, fighting with everything he had to get free. Knife in one hand, rifle in the other, using his boots and helmet as weapons too. One headbutt and it should have died, but four seconds into the fight, Nate realized he'd headbutted it at least three times and it was still fighting on as strongly as ever. If this thing even _had_ a brain, it had to be somewhere other than in its head.

Not for the first time and certainly not for the last, he was thankful for his armor and the systems that came with it – particularly the energy shields, comparatively weak as he had always considered them. While he battled for the upper hand, his shielding and armor allowed him to sacrifice a little of his usual defensive tactics.

Now on the offense, Nate surged to his feet, lifting the _thing_ two feet off the ground and flinging it back to the tree line so hard he heard bones snap when it hit a tree trunk. A second almighty _crack_ sounded an instant later and the tree fell.

"Are you all right?" Lin asked him, her voice a fraction shaky with shock and concern.

"Mmh," he grunted to the affirmative. "You?"

"I'm not hurt… everyone's ok, only that first one got close enough to have a chance to hurt anybody." As she spoke, the medic's voice steadied, until she was the cool, detached professional Nate knew she only pretended to be.

"Damned monitor led us into an ambush," Eli commented, shoving Leo and Corey out of the way as he made his way over to Nate and Lin.

"Told you it was bad news," Alpha said smugly.

"Ugh, quit the gloating," Brent groaned.

"Enough. Threes, see if you can gather any intelligence. Angel Six, you too." Nate had no time for friction within his little group. They were Spartans, and he expected them to act like it. Petty rivalries were beneath them.

As always, Nate was the first to hear signs of something approaching. This time it was the Monitor's humming. He listened to its tuneless harmony and had the distinct impression that it had lost its computerized mind. That was not a good feeling when coupled with the sure knowledge that here, it held far more power than Nate and his Spartans. Even with Andromeda and Cynisca, the two AIs, on their side.

He almost dropped his rifle in surprise when the Monitor returned flanked by two… _things_. The things were metallic, like the Monitor, but hard-edged and comprised mainly of straight lines. Nate's eyes could just determine a very faint shimmer surrounding each of them, indicating they were shielded.

"Those are Sentinels," Zeke said. "Don't ask me how I know… I just know. The Monitor has control of them, so as long as we keep it happy, they're on our side."

"Excellent, you survived. Follow." The Monitor's incessant cheer was really beginning to grate on Nate's temper. The more it whistled and hummed, the more tempted he was to either grab it and rip it apart with his bare hands, or borrow Leo's Spartan Laser and blast it into slag.

Controlling his temper, Nate followed Failing Duty, watching with some curiosity when one of the Sentinels blasted something that looked suspiciously like a rabbit into a pile of smoking ash. The more logical part of his mind inferred that the Monitor was displaying its power to ensure the 'Reclaimers' would obey. The impulsive part of his mind wanted that weapon for himself. For now, the logical part won out.

Nate's Spartans moved at a fast jog – which would have been an all-out breakneck sprint for anyone else – and quickly fell into perfect step with one another, again with one notable exception. Again, that exception was Alpha. Nate frowned and resolved to keep an eye on her. It felt, to him, like she was deliberately setting herself apart from the rest.

"Oh," the Monitor said. "Oh dear."

Nate looked back to where he was going, and instantly stopped his feet, sliding forwards regardless on the loose soil. He fought for his balance, and to stop more quickly. The sheer dropoff approached too quickly for comfort and, as pointman of the formation, he had less time than anyone to react.

What had started as an elegant sliding stop ended as a frantic scramble to redirect his momentum. The extraordinary ability of a Spartan, to experience time as a crawl and a race all at once, allowed him to register every single millimeter of ground he crossed trying to stop, and allowed him to calculate whether it would be physically possible for him to stop himself from falling to what was most likely to be his death.

He was cutting it damn close, and at this rate, he wasn't going to make it. Nate let out a frustrated grunt and let the strength flow through his legs, opposing his own momentum. Trying to backflip away from the edge. It wasn't so easy to counteract inertia and despite his impressive strength, Nate felt his boots slip off the edge.

Time returned to its normal pace as he felt his body follow his feet. As a last-ditch effort, the sniper made a grab for a handhold, any handhold, and felt a rush of relief when he found one. But it wasn't strong enough to hold a half-ton of Spartan and armor as dead weight, much less that same weight moving around to try to haul itself back up. Nate felt it begin to give way.

* * *

**AN: to the Anonymous Reviewer. Any similarities to RVB or the majority of the books are purely coincidental - I haven't read any of the books in years, bar The Flood which doesn't REALLY count anyway considering H1 Anniversary is one of my favourites of the series. Some of the game references are deliberate. The height of my Spartans is based on something I distinctly recall reading in Fall of Reach which makes reference to the Spartans being around 2 1/2 metres tall - which is roughly eight feet or so - hence they are of a height range of about 7'7" [Lin] upwards. Cas is nearly 9' tall but is very much the exception. Nate is exactly 8' because I don't want him small but don't want him particularly large either. For my six, who are NOT the same as the 33 'canon' Spartans, averages may differ. Though my guys are lumped in with the II series, they are technically more of an experiment. Not quite a I series, not quite a II series, entirely the wrong time frame to be categorized as IIIs or IVs. They are nine years older than the 33 and have mostly stuck with their original purpose of stamping out the Insurrection, the reasons for which I intend to explore in-depth later.**

**Now to the current chapter. We have some unexpected developments in this.. and the next which I have just made a start on. Some of which I did not intend, some of which have been coming for quite some time, as the astute observer may already have determined. With these new developments about Haven, I frankly have no idea where the story is going to go from here. These new developments totally screw up the canon storyline unless I can come up with some explanation as to why this information doesn't come to light for some years yet.**

**Also, I can't remember when in the canon storyline they all get their energy shields, and I've spent so much time writing post-H1 that I'm too used to them having shields and keep slipping up when I try otherwise. So, stuff that, my six at least have shields. And Jeod's team. And Alpha, because she's a Solo so she has the best of everything. Alpha's leaving AoD soon... which means there is hope yet for a return of my AA muse and more chapters for that. I hope so. I rather enjoy writing Alpha. She's my most established character, which naturally also makes her my most diverse and complex.**

**The "allies in unexpected places" thing will come up soon, but first they have to discover the enemy in the unexpected place. I can't believe we've got to nineteen chapters and STILL haven't gotten to the main plotline yet... I've been trying to introduce that through one of the many sub-plots but the fickle beast who is my muse is really making life difficult at the moment.**

**I HATE THIS CHAPTER, so while reviews are, as always, welcome, please be a little bit nicer to me on this one than what I've been asking for for the previous eighteen. Do let me know what you want to see in future chapters!**

**As you should all know by now, Halo isn't mine, characters and storyline are [bar the odd canon character/event I might reference or write in].**


	21. Ch 20

A jolt of panic ran through the pit of Lin's stomach. She bolted forwards and flung herself down on her belly, arms and shoulders over the edge of the cliff, grabbing for Nate. Any part of him would do, so long as he didn't fall. _Not Nate. Not him. Anyone but him. Come on Lin, come on._ "Reach for my hand!"

She watched, helpless, as Nate swung himself upwards to reach, and his handhold gave way. Lin felt Eli's hands on her ankles, and flung herself after her leader, just grabbing hold of his wrists in time. "I got you, I got you," she muttered in time with her own panicked breathing. She thought she saw concern in the way Nate looked up at her, head cocked ever so slightly to one side.

"You all right?" he asked. Lin blinked. Definitely concerned.

"Yeah," she lied, a little breathless. "You're the one who almost fell to his death."

Nate let out a short laugh as Eli and Zeke hauled them both back to safety, fending off Platinum Team's attempts to help. "How fast your heart's going, anyone would think it was you who slipped off the cliff. Where'd that Monitor go?"

Lin looked around wildly. No floating metal ball. No 'Sentinel' things either. "It sure likes to disappear in a crisis."

"You think that was bad…" Jeod said ominously, "…check _that_ out."

Eyes flicking to where Jeod was pointing, Lin swore softly under her breath. That thing was huge. Easily fourteen feet tall, maybe even fifteen. She wasn't great at guessing heights by eye. As wide, and as _long_, as it was tall. All fourteen or fifteen feet of it was covered in scales a sickening shade of green-white, which shone like a frog's skin and looked hard enough to deflect any projectile or explosive.

"Leo," Nate said softly. It had taken him less time than it had taken Lin to realize that Leo's laser was their only hope.

"What is it with our luck lately?" Lin muttered to herself, forgetting again that her comm mike was on.

"I know what you mean," Eli agreed.

"Whatever can go wrong, will," Nate added. "And just to rub salt into the wound, a few things that _can't_, as well."

"Ever since HighCom made that mistake, and we met Jeod," Zeke commented. "Anyone else notice how things were pretty good before then, and now we're lucky to make it through any given hour without someone dying?"

"He's jinxed," Lin said, only half joking. She glanced uneasily at the Solo who stood a yard apart from the group. Alpha was the one who had _really_ brought all the bad luck. Her with her suspicions and the way she could imply anyone was responsible for anything without barely speaking a word. Her upon whose record it was noted that she had briefly experienced what, in a Solo, basically amounted to a psychotic break.

The Solo watched Lin back, and the medic wondered what exactly it was she kept seeing in Alpha's body language that bothered her so much. Lin could not put her finger on any one thing, though there was something unfamiliar and concerning in the set of the enforcer's shoulders and the way she held her head.

Distracted thus, Lin barely noticed as Leo charged up his laser and let rip right into the scaled creature's face. Or rather, what amounted to one, because it appeared to have eyes and nostril-slits and a mouth. The laser did a lot of damage, but the thing was not dead.

Leo swore under his breath and charged the laser again, swiftly backing away from the scaled creature that had turned its attention to him and was now quite visibly mad. _Rule number one of smart combat, Leo_, he reminded himself ruefully. _Live to die another day._

His weapon seemed to take an age to charge, but finally the little marker in his targeter reached full charge and he released the trigger. The weapon kicked violently, as it always did, but this time the laser beam punched a large hole through the creature's torso and severed both its 'arms'. It fell heavily, but _still_ was not dead. It was effectively helpless, so Leo gestured to Corey to help him, and together they tossed it off the cliff.

"That wasn't organic, or at least not native," Corey said. "Weighed too damn much for the gravity here. Things that heavy usually only live in low-G environments. This is a little higher than Earth gravity."

Leo nodded in vague agreement, but had already shifted his concentration to the sound of the Monitor's humming in the distance. He was coming to expect disaster whenever that thing's humming left off. Sure, it was irritating, but it seemed to know when something was coming, and how, invariably, to avoid that something.

As the Monitor drew closer, Leo sensed more than heard the others react to something close by. He turned his attention to them, then to the place they were concentrating on, and blinked a few times in surprise.

Something had made a bridge out of light. Leo had little enough experience with Forerunner technology that this concept was still incredible to him, but just enough that he knew he could trust the bridge… provided of course it did not suddenly fail.

"What the…?" Nate was, true to form, the closest to the light bridge, and edging closer. Leo allowed himself a small smile at that observation, and watched as Eli battled with himself over whether to be wary and mistrustful of the unfamiliar thing, or to place his faith in Nate.

"It's safe," Jeod announced. "We've seen these a couple of times before."

Nate nodded, then turned his attention to the returned Monitor. "I take it you want us to cross this?"

"But of course, Reclaimer! Why else would I reactivate it?"

"All right," the sniper agreed gruffly, visibly uneasy. Leo moved closer, obeying a gestured order from Jeod to stay with the group, and then followed when Nate finally started across the light bridge.

"Hard light," Nate marveled, pausing briefly then picking up the pace a little in an unconscious expression of his continued unease.

"Compressed photons can be put to many different uses," the Monitor informed the Spartans haughtily. Leo ignored it and trotted obediently at Jeod's heels. There was more at stake here than a learning opportunity and a bit of cool tech. Nobody was quite sure what, but Leo was certain, based on each individual's body language, that they all understood the stakes were high. Higher, even, than what they were used to dealing with.

_-HOURS PASS-_

If, hours ago, Nate's patience with the Monitor had been wearing thin, now it was utterly threadbare and threatening to completely fall apart. It was taking more self-control than he had thought he possessed simply to keep himself from sighing in irritation every two seconds.

The thing's incessant humming was driving him insane, and every single time it disappeared on him, something dangerous turned up and started trying to kill his comrades. He had asked Andromeda to keep an eye on any AI activity and thus far did not like her findings. The Monitor's activity invariably greatly increased in the minutes before each attack and seemed to be directed in whatever direction the attack would come from.

The data were not in the construct's favor. Nate was just about to give up on controlling himself and just destroy the thing when it reminded him, by activating another light bridge, that without it, he and his Spartans were helpless and would be stuck here for goodness knew how long waiting for backup that would never come.

Patience had never been his greatest virtue, and now, Nate felt like he was being tested… though for what purpose, he had no idea. He allowed himself the brief satisfaction of a murderous scowl, before controlling his expression again.

His suspicion grew that Failing Duty had been lying when it had said it was unable to teleport them any closer. Even interrupted as their progress had been thus far, Nate and his Spartans could cross ground quite quickly, and in the past hours he estimated they had traveled easily thirty or forty kilometers. That was all well and good, and 'slow' progress for them, but on foot was a frustrating way to travel, especially now that they all knew the Monitor could teleport them almost instantaneously.

_"To any of these points closer to our objective,"_ Andromeda added to Nate's thought. _"Each set of coordinates is a major hub in the data highways which crisscross Haven's interior. Smaller data hubs would easily handle one of us, but based on the knowledge I have been able to glean, only the major hubs will take all of us at once."_

Nate wasn't quite sure he was comfortable with Andromeda counting herself as one of them, but her chip _was_ present in his head, so he decided that the 'us' meant 'this group'.

Failing Duty floated a few yards ahead, its constant humming slightly lower in volume and thus slightly less distracting. Nate felt the chemicals in his bloodstream beginning to wear off, and fatigue once again beginning to weigh him down. He ordered his suit to inject him with another wake-up stim, tempted to also activate a caffeine injection. After a brief internal argument, he decided to refrain from the caffeine for now. He used too many stims and chemicals, especially at times like this. His sleeping patterns were bad enough as it was.

"You look exhausted," Lin said gently.

"Mmh," Nate said in agreement. "Trying to take it easy on the stims and the caffeine."

"We need you at your best, Nate. I've already saved your ass a few times today. Leave the taking it easy for another time."

Nate eyed the Monitor curiously. Perhaps it would be worth a shot just to ask… "Failing Duty, was it?"

"Yes, Reclaimer?" the Monitor responded immediately, ceasing its humming.

"My companions and I need some sleep sooner or later. Is there anywhere safe we might rest?"

"Oh, well I do wish you had asked earlier. I must say I cannot guarantee _safety_ this close to the control room. However there is a facility inside which you may take shelter not far ahead, and I shall station a group of Sentinels to protect you while you rest."

"How far is 'not far'?" Nate asked irritably, refusing to falter in his pace.

"At your current pace, barring any more unfortunate interruptions, I imagine we will reach the facility by nightfall, Reclaimer. Night falls on Haven's interior in approximately two and one half hours."

Frustrated and exhausted, Nate caved in to his caffeine craving, frowning at himself when the fatigue seemed to lift moments after the substance was injected into his bloodstream. He _really_ needed to cut back on the caffeine; fatigue could be a withdrawal symptom, and to have withdrawals he had to be addicted first. He knew this injection would wear off in about two hours, and would leave him drained but still buzzing. Sleep would not come easily on his first night back on Haven.

_-LATER-_

Lin sat with her back against a wall, tucked as tightly into a corner as she could manage. The artificial night-time here bothered her, but not only that… she kept flicking her gaze to Nate's restless form as the other Spartan moved about the room.

Her in-depth knowledge of his every mannerism told her that the fact that he could not sit still indicated that he was unlikely to sleep much, and if he did manage an hour or two's shut-eye, it would be restless and broken. The nightmares had always been a regular occurrence, worse when he was stressing over something or still jittery from too much caffeine. The way he held his shoulders and the slightly exaggerated care with which he moved indicated Nate was dog tired, exhausted enough that if not for the caffeine he would be entirely unable to keep his eyes open.

Lin herself was not far off that point. The adrenaline of combat or medical work would return her to a fully awake and alert state, but she had a feeling Nate was just that drained that he had managed to compromise himself. The medic sincerely hoped they would not see combat until her team leader managed to get some sleep.

She watched him sit back down – also back to a wall, tucked into a corner – and flashed him a quick 'Spartan smile', the universally recognizable fingers-across-the-faceplate hand signal she shunned almost entirely. She might have been quiet, sensitive and softly spoken, but a conformist, Lin was most certainly not.

Nate returned the 'smile' but knew instantly Lin had not seen the gesture. She had dozed off at last. Nate was possessive and protective enough of his brothers and sister that he often refused to go to sleep until the rest of them were out, and the last of the caffeine in his system made that all too easy.

He had to order himself to go to sleep but when he did, he welcomed it with open arms and a slightly delirious grin.

_Lin was in his dream. He never dreamt about – or with – anyone he could remember knowing, so that in and of itself sent a jolt of confused surprise through him._

_She was standing and waiting for him, but hadn't seen him yet. Nate took the opportunity to commit to memory everything he ever noticed about her. Right then, she wore dress uniform, and Nate could tell by the uncomfortable feel of the collar of his shirt, and the choking feeling of the tie, that he did as well._

_Lin's dress uniform was, according to standard, smart navy blue, with brass buttons. Her Medical Officer's insignia was pinned neatly in its place above her medals and campaign ribbons, and beside it, in a deliberate and tidy parallel of the tattoos they all bore, the Spartan insignia._

_All of that was regulation and Nate's uniform mirrored it, except, of course, for the fact that instead of Medical Officer's insignia he proudly bore his new Lieutenant Commander's insignia. He had been promoted not all that long ago and still cared enough about rank that the mere thought had him standing a little straighter and puffing out his chest._

_What set Lin apart was her shocking, heartbreaking beauty. The face that both contradicted and confirmed the hard muscles of her body with the way the underlying bone structure was so delicate and perfect, yet the expression upon it was utterly impervious. Most strangers thought Lin was smirking at them because the scar on her cheek pulled one side of her mouth up into a permanent half-smile. She stood with poise and grace more befitting of an Admiral's wife than a soldier._

_Nate tore his eyes away from his team-mate, away from the young woman he often considered to be many things besides what he was _supposed_ to think of her as. She was not his sister. She was closer than that. She was his best friend, his confidante._

_Had to make sure he was presentable too. He found a mirror and ran two fingers along his jawline, examining his face closely for any hint of stubble. He had shaved that morning, but he often had a shadow upon his jaw by noon. Not that day. His copper skin was as smooth as if he had just put the razor down. His short black hair tried to be wavy, but cut as short as it was to adhere to regulations, lacked the length. Left to himself Nate liked it a little longer because it felt bristly and uncomfortable beneath his helmet this short, but formal occasions required strict adherence to regulation._

_He realized with a jolt that this was a memory, not a dream, and surrendered himself entirely to it, allowing it to take him where he knew it would._

_Satisfied that he was ready, Nate nodded once to himself, then went to greet Lin._

_The cheerful scene vanished, fading instead into the now-familiar, now-dreaded nightmare where he started off in the kitchen and the benches were well above his head. He knew what was coming and tried to watch from a distance, but this was a dream, and he was trapped by his own mind._

"Nate, wake up," Lin said softly. "Everyone else is ready to go. And you were having another nightmare… lucky for you, you're subtle about it. Nobody else noticed."

Nate realized gratefully that he was in the facility that Failing Duty had told them would shelter them, and that the other Spartans – Lin excepted – were all standing or sitting near the door, waiting to be able to leave. Nate himself had not moved from the seated position he had been in during his last wakeful, too-exhausted-to-sleep, memory.

He got to his feet, feeling rather tongue-tied, and instead of speaking, just nodded at the Monitor which hovered a few yards away, near the door.

"You are ready to move on? Oh, this is wonderful news indeed! Come, Reclaimer, we've no time to waste."

Nate shared an exasperated glance with Lin, but followed Failing Duty out through the door and back into chaos.

* * *

**AN: at last, twenty chapters! Took me long enough to write in some description of Nate and Lin. Still have to figure out how to 'show' people what the others look like.**

**I want to time warp once they're through on Haven, but if I do that, this new team dynamic that's developing will have to jump forward... asking now to give you guys time to let me know your thoughts on the matter! Would you rather follow the development of the team dynamic, or jump forward to a time when more "interesting" things are developing with the storyline? This closeness between Nate and Lin is nothing new but it is developing a new meaning.**

**Also, is there anyone whose point of view you want me to explore more? It can be someone I haven't focused on yet, or it can be someone whose mind you want more insight into. I love input. I'm not just writing for me here, guys - your continued enjoyment is of utmost importance. Without readers I have no audience!**

**As always please review. Again I'm not happy with the way this chapter flows, but I'm notorious for being my own worst critic, so I'm going to leave it be before I stuff it up completely. I want to know what's wrong specifically, not just in general terms - so please let me know what you do and don't like!**

**Halo is not mine, characters and storyline are [barring a few canon references and a possible appearance later on].**


	22. Ch 21

Eli was a patient man, but this was just getting ridiculous. He was starting to feel like he could barely take two steps before something _else_ held him, and the group, up.

It was difficult for him to know what to do. Nate's distraction meant that he was presently being a dreadful leader, but Eli did not want to cause trouble. A power struggle was the last thing they needed. Long-term, the issue needed to be addressed. Really, Eli thought, it needed to be addressed now, given the circumstances.

But he was not willing to risk starting an argument, and with Nate in this strange mood, he didn't know what to expect.

"While you were asleep," Zeke said, "I tried to raise the _Devastation_. Nothing. We've lost all contact on the command frequency and my enhanced sensors aren't picking up her presence at all."

"Damn it," Nate swore. "I sure hope Anderson hasn't bailed on us."

Eli silently agreed.

His gun clicked empty. Eli ducked behind cover to reload, noting with some apprehension that he was running low on ammunition. There was no chance of a resupply, not here, and the creatures attacking them carried no weapons.

Re-entering the fray, he concentrated his fire on a particular enemy that looked to be more of a threat than the rest. Leo's Spartan Laser lanced through another part of the mob, narrowly missing a Sentinel as it did so, and Nate had switched to his sniper rifle. At this range, that could only mean one thing. Eli was not the only one running out of options.

His rifle clicked empty again. He reloaded quickly, now onto his very last clip, and found himself actually _praying_. Eli was not religious in any sense of the word, yet he prayed that whatever greater power was out there might drop a fresh weapon in his lap, so to speak. Running out of ammunition completely in the middle of combat was every soldier's worst nightmare. At this rate, that was what was about to happen.

Someone swore – it sounded like that Solo, Alpha – and Eli saw a frag grenade arc towards the enemy. A couple of seconds later the grenade detonated, and was followed by another.

"I'm out," Alpha said. "Got nothing left. Unless you want me to throw rocks at them."

"We're all running low," Corey told her. "Rocks will be more useful than just standing there."

Immediately a rock streaked from the same place where the grenades had originated, and smacked into the side of an alien's head with enough force that the alien's skull caved in.

Eli's weapon clicked empty again. He shouldered it and started picking up rocks and throwing them. Soon half the others followed suit, including Leo, whose Spartan Laser still had enough energy for one or two shots.

"Dibs on whichever one's the last standing," Brent called. A murmur of assent ran through the group.

Eli threw a rock so hard he almost threw himself off balance. It clipped the top of one alien's skull – still a big enough impact to kill it – then went on to hit a taller alien square in the face, killing that one too.

"Two aliens, one stone, eh Eli?" Zeke quipped, referring of course to the old adage about birds. Eli ignored him.

Finally, Nate killed the second to last alien, and Brent darted forwards, rock in hand, to brain the very last one. Everyone fell back into formation as if it were how they would naturally have chosen to arrange themselves in a casual setting, with Nate on point, Eli to his right and behind, and Jeod to his left and behind.

As one, they all started after the Monitor, which floated ahead, humming cheerfully as ever. Eli thought Lin, who was just behind him and, as per the formation, to his left, seemed a little fixated on Nate. That concerned him. The two had always been close but something had changed, something Eli could not identify, and now the closeness seemed almost obsessive.

He couldn't shake the feeling that that would somehow cause a lot of trouble in the very near future.

_-MEANWHILE-_

"Have you located them yet?" Anderson asked, voice more than a little impatient.

"No, not yet. I have a strong reading, but it cannot be correct." Christopher brought a map up onto the main viewscreen, with a marker _inside_ the planet. "Scans indicate the planet is indeed hollow, but it is utterly impossible for our Spartans to reach this point at all, much less in so little time."

Raph stood at a respectful distance, present mainly because he had nothing better to do, and partly – though a much lesser part – because it was _his_ team-mates who had mysteriously vanished. Perhaps they had teleported, he thought, remembering what Zeke had said about absence of evidence something-or-other. He said as much.

"Even if Haven _does_ have the systems and technology for that, how would they have known to tap into them?" Anderson countered.

"Maybe that's what the artifact does." Raph hadn't really thought that part through, and even if he had, Zeke was the tech. _Zeke_ was the one who was supposed to understand these things. Zeke was planetside.

"I want to send down a Pelican load of Marines to investigate. Christopher, your thoughts?"

"General, you know I have the utmost respect for your instincts, but frankly, if the Spartan is right, that would be a waste of resources. If, and I stress _if_, the Marines could get past all the Insurrectionist troops on Haven's surface, I highly doubt they would have any means of reaching these coordinates. If my readings are misleading, the Marines would have no idea where to begin their search." Christopher's holographic form crossed its arms to indicate he was not in agreement with the idea.

"Last known position would be a start."

"Even that is uncertain, sir. The thick forest and Haven's non-organic nature both act to potentially render our positioning sensors inaccurate."

Raph watched and listened, understanding what was being said but not really comprehending it. It was unusual enough that his suggestion was being seriously considered, and he had _never_ heard an AI apply 'ifs' to its findings. As he considered the exchange, he kept his face carefully impassive; while he knew that he was so used to controlling his expressions, only other Spartans could read his face anyway, he did not want to risk Christopher spotting some subtle sign or another that betrayed his thoughts.

He liked Christopher. The AI was friendly, if a little formal, and seemed to have a strong sense of morals. Raph thought that this was the sort of AI that Nate might be able to learn to trust. Failing that, accept, though Andromeda seemed to be doing a good job of getting him to do _that_.

"I won't be disappointed if that Solo doesn't come back," Anderson commented. "Something about her gives me the jitters."

"It's Solo heaven down there," Raph said hopefully. "Maybe she'll decide to stay. Stamp out the Innies. Everyone would be happy then."

"Except the Innies," the navigation officer quipped, a little too casual given the circumstances.

"I don't much like her either," Christopher agreed. "Her record is… concerning. I can access more than most, including in-depth explanations of every concerning development, yet even so I find myself wary of her."

Raph nodded his agreement. If it _had_ to be a Solo, why her? Not only was she the most capable, she was also the most dangerous – not a good mix.

"They are moving again," Christopher said, zooming the 'map' in to show the larger landmarks such as cliffs and rivers. A few landmarks looked like buildings, but Raph couldn't be sure. Maybe they were strange rock formations or something.

Grateful for something to do, Raph shifted his weight onto one foot and settled in to watch.

_-MEANWHILE-_

Eli had dropped back in the formation, ostensibly to keep an eye on the Solo – because he could easily see that Alpha made Nate nervous – but really, he wanted to be near the back so that he could watch and analyze what was going on within the team dynamic.

Zeke was, as per usual, cheerful and everybody's best friend. It was comforting, Eli thought, to know that at least _something_ hadn't changed. Lin seemed herself apart from the new fixation on Nate… but Lin had always been more sensitive, more emotional, than the rest of them, so there wasn't much room for her baseline to change. Eli watched her, resisting the urge to cock his head, as the medic ran slightly closer to Nate than was usual. Her body language was protective… and there was something else Eli had seen in Marines, but never in another Spartan. Something akin to possessiveness, like Nate was _Lin's_ property and nobody else's, but with an undercurrent of need.

He pondered this uneasily. Personal attachments, especially attachments so deep, were dangerous. They made good soldiers take stupid risks. Too many times, he had seen Marines dash out of cover for a dead squadmate, only to be gunned down themselves. That was what personal attachment did. It opened a person up to grief, which almost always made intelligent people do incredibly stupid things.

Eli remembered Halsey telling them that some of their augmentations had the not undesirable side effect of suppressing the brain's ability to create the hormones that caused feelings of lust and of personal attachment. In theory none of them should have been able to feel anything more for each other than the mutual trust created by so many years of living and working as one organism.

But… was it possible…? Eli frowned, confused. Friendships had definitely developed – he and Nate shared _everything_, and Nate and Lin were so close they could predict each other's exact thoughts without fail. There were other examples of this, as well – Cas and Raph were like twins, despite the fact that Raph was an irritating idiot at times, and Zeke just loved everyone. If friendships such as these had developed, and if anything grown closer after augmentation, Eli figured it more than possible that something more could come to fruition, given enough time.

Time, he reflected, was something they had in spades. Thirty years of training together, all living together in the barracks, and relying entirely upon each other could certainly create more than simply mutual trust.

_Is it possible? Does she… love him?_ Eli was reluctant to think the words, but as he did, he had a feeling he was right. He knew little of love, but based on conversations he had overheard between a few of the younger Marines, it could easily have been the source of the tension between Nate and Lin. Lin's nervousness, Nate's irritability and distraction. It explained _everything_.

The jolt of dread that ran through the pit of Eli's stomach had nothing to do with the fact that the Monitor had disappeared again, and everything to do with the realization he had come to.

Failing Duty whistled and hummed cheerfully as he zoomed away from the Reclaimers. He had been waiting for so many long years. He had understood, of course, that his task would involve lonely solitude, but one hundred thousand years was an awfully long time to be utterly alone except the animals and the Sentinels.

He supposed that perhaps, he should have warned his group of Reclaimers about the scaled ones his files referred to as Type Gamma Reptilians. He had full faith that the humans in their combat skins could handle the animals' attacks, for they were cleverer and faster than the reptiles, and had projectile weapons. Primitive though they were, the human weapons seemed to be effective.

Apart from the unfortunate fact that, like the Forerunners who had created Duty, the humans had not been able to create a weapon with an unlimited supply of projectiles. Forerunner weapons used compressed photons, which was a far more effective and efficient type of ammunition than the metal bullets the humans used, but even _those_ were not unlimited.

The Monitor put the thought out of his processors and continued towards the control mechanism for the next light bridge, ordering the Sentinels that flanked him to destroy a few of the reptiles as they passed them over.

These Reclaimers were more resourceful than the last group, and their combat skins were far superior – Grade Two, which was insufficient still, but a much better choice than the Grade One skins the last ones had worn. The last ones had lasted but an hour. Duty supposed these true Reclaimers' success, so far, was partly due to their greater size, speed and strength, and partly due to their superior combat skins. Certainly the weaponry was much the same, and could not, therefore, be the differentiating variable.

The mechanism came within range, and again Duty put all thoughts of his Reclaimers out of his consciousness. He had priorities. First among those was to get this bridge working again, so that he might fulfil the other half of his purpose – to guide the Reclaimers, that they might free the very last surviving Forerunners.

Unfortunately, light bridge mechanisms could be rather temperamental, especially after one hundred thousand years of neglect. Failing Duty reflected that perhaps his name was more fitting than he had thought, for it had been his duty to maintain this installation, and in that, he had failed. He reached the activation switch and was immediately aware that this would be more complicated than simply zapping it to life.

Hovering a few hundred units above and west of the Reclaimers, Duty set to work realigning the circuits.

_-MEANWHILE-_

Nate swore under his breath, spotting the reason the Monitor had cleared off again. Another inactive light bridge. This one appeared to have a switch, but one glance told him it was not working.

Acutely aware of Lin's presence at his side, the Spartan ordered his group to a halt and concentrated on what his ears were telling him. Haven was teeming with life, and Nate's ears picked up an overwhelming wealth of sounds. He sifted through what he was hearing, listening for anything that might indicate the approach of a threat, while he kept his eyes on the light bridge's switch, waiting for the moment when Failing Duty would succeed in restoring the power supply.

Focused thus on what he could hear, Nate could actually _hear_ his Spartans' body language. He heard Eli's shoulder set, and it worried him. Eli was nervous. _No, not nervous,_ Nate corrected himself. _He has realized something that frightens him._

"What is it, Two?"

"Nothing that is pertinent to our mission, Lead," Eli responded formally. "I shall explain at a more appropriate time."

"Suit yourself," Nate said casually, in a rare display of nonchalance. Eli's reluctance to say anything made him even more curious, but it was better that Nate leave the irrelevant details for a later time. There was far too much relevant information for him to process for him to give more than a passing thought to anything unimportant.

The bridge switch lit up, showing a number of geometric shapes, along with a few runes Nate could not decipher. He walked up to it, hesitated for half a second, then put a hand to the hologram, expecting it to be nothing more than light. To his immense surprise, he felt resistance against his fingers, as if he were pressing a mechanical switch.

The hologram changed color, and the blue-white of the substance the Monitor called 'compressed photons' flickered across the gap.

Failing Duty materialized in front of him, surrounded briefly by the same golden light rings that had heralded their earlier teleportation.

"Success!" the metallic ball crowed. "The facility you see ahead is the control tower, Reclaimer. The control _room_ is at the top. I must warn you to expect combat. The defense mechanisms do not have an override."

Nate glanced at each of his Spartans, then back at the Monitor. "You wouldn't, perchance, have a weapons cache somewhere?"

"Indeed there is a large store of Forerunner weaponry just inside the structure! Come, come!"

Though he still did not trust Failing Duty, Nate followed it. He had no choice. If he wanted to get his Spartans out of this alive, he had to keep the Monitor happy.

Three acknowledgement lights suddenly burned bright red in his HUD. He didn't look at them long enough to tell whose they were, too alarmed himself at the sudden feeling that something was about to go horribly wrong.

"Leo!" Jeod barked. "Laser! Slag that piece of crap!"

"Sir!" Leo responded, already charging his weapon.

"That's your last shot. Make it count!"

"Sir!"

Nate watched, feeling of dread growing, as Leo painted a little red dot right in the middle of the Monitor's 'eye', and then the glowing blue circle turned entirely red.

"No! Unacceptable! I cannot allow you to retain your memories! Reclaimer, desist immediately, or I will have to-"

Leo's laser kicked, belting Failing Duty with a brighter and wider beam than Nate had expected. The Monitor's 'eye' turned blue again, then red, then back, flickering like a strobe light for three or four seconds while the whole construct shuddered and sparked.

Duty exploded. While the blast itself was small, some kind of a bright white pulse emanated from it. Nate watched as the pulse washed over his Spartans, who each swayed for a fraction of a second before collapsing. Frozen in fear and indecision, he could do nothing to protect himself.

Everything went white, and then he felt himself hit the floor.

* * *

**AN: WHEEEE Monitors are so much fun to write! Again I'm not happy with the flow of the chapter, and would have liked to spend more time on Raph, but overall I'm pretty happy. Someone was supposed to die in this chapter but that didn't end up happening - apparently Jeod is on the ball! Oh well, soon... oh and of course as I've been saying for a couple of chapters now, Alpha is leaving soon. No, she's not the one who was meant to die.**

**Did anyone see Eli's realization coming? I admit I did not intend for Eli to be the first to realize exactly what was going on, but like I said last chapter, this has been on the cards since the start. Lin's character was specifically designed to be more capable of being human than the rest of them... and as for Nate, well, while Eli has his suspicions I don't think even Nate knows what he feels about Lin.**

**So excited about the next chapter - going to be so much fun writing what comes next. Arghh, I wish I could sit on the computer 24/7 and just write. It's so hard to put it down and leave it for a while!**

**As always please review. You know the drill by now.**

**Halo is not mine. Characters and story are [except a few canon references], though Failing Duty is rather heavily inspired by Guilty Spark, and was an incidental anyway so I wasn't really going to put TOO much thought into how to make him feel like a Monitor yet be unique.**


	23. Ch 22

Corey opened his eyes to darkness. He activated his night vision and pain shot through his skull. Now he could see, but he wasn't sure it was worth feeling like someone had stabbed him in both temples.

Disoriented, he got to his feet and staggered over to a wall. His head was swimming. He could see Jeod, Brent and Leo all still on the ground, and a bunch of other Spartans he didn't remember having seen before.

"What is going _on_?" he murmured, glancing at each stranger in turn, waiting for some trait or another to ring a bell.

The wreckage of a _something_ was on the floor. Finding his balance, Corey went over to it, and crouched beside it. With practiced hands he went through the pieces, trying to find something familiar. Nothing was – even down to the metal it was made of. He did not recognize this alloy.

He straightened and left the debris, making his way over to what looked like a weapon rack. It was empty and the crate next to it had no useful ammunition inside. His empty weapons, while light from lack of ammunition, weighed heavy on his mind. It was bad enough being stuck in an unfamiliar environment with a bunch of total strangers.

Someone stirred. Corey whipped around – his vision blurred and he swayed a little – and watched them get to their feet.

Suddenly it came to him. He _did_ know these Spartans – Angel Team, led by Nate, who was the one he was now staring at. They were stationed onboard the _Devastation_ and had fought alongside Platinum to repel the Covenant attack. He recalled making landfall on Haven, and sneaking through the forest, but when they had all paused for Zeke to climb a tree and throw supplies down from it, his memory went blank. He could recall nothing after that point.

The others all stirred, and, one by one, stood, all unsteady, all clearly disoriented and confused.

"Is everyone all right?" he heard himself ask.

Jeod assessed each member of Platinum Team's stance briefly, then nodded. "No injuries on Platinum."

"Angel Team is fully present and accounted for," Nate added, voice steadier than Corey had expected.

"Anyone have any idea what happened?" Zeke asked.

There was a collective shaking of heads. Corey watched in silence as each Spartan steadied him- or herself. Gradually he realized there was one too few Spartans.

"Wait," he said slowly. "Where's the Solo?"

"Alpha?" Nate looked around uneasily.

"Yeah."

"No idea." Corey heard a note of relief in the other Spartan's voice, before Nate switched to the command channel. "All UNSC personnel on Forerunner shield world Haven, respond."

Nothing answered.

"Can't say I'm sad to see the back of her," Zeke said. "She gave me the creeps."

There was utter silence for a few seconds before everyone fell into formation. Nate was on point. Corey waited, then moved with the formation, unsure where they were going. He found he didn't really care.

_-MEANWHILE-_

"I've got them again!" Christopher crowed. "There, see?"

Raph saw. The dot that was marked as being Nate's transponder signal was at ground level within what looked like a building. They were still _inside_ Haven.

Gradually the dot moved, gaining altitude as it did so. Raph realized suddenly that he was still standing close to the main screen, with his hands on Anderson's control panel. He stepped back, remembering the feeling of panic when the team had dropped out of contact. That kind of dropout meant one of two things – either they were dead, or something was jamming their signal. Raph was beyond relieved that it was the latter this time.

The prospect of having only Cas to rely on terrified him. Cas was great, but even Raph could see that the close quarters expert could be inconsistent, and given that both of them were constantly injured in some manner or another, it was a recipe for disaster.

Raph forced himself to concentrate on the now. Dwelling on his moment of panic would do him no good. He was beginning to wonder about his own sanity. Perhaps they were right. Maybe he really was going mad.

Often when the Marines called him crazy their words were accompanied with an awed tone. When Nate and the team called him crazy, they were joking with him, participating in the thirty-year-old ritual of trading insults they didn't really mean… but it hadn't escaped Raph's notice that he wasn't the only one who occasionally meant what he said in those moments. Ever since the existence of other Spartans had come to the team's collective attention, things were different.

_Am I really insane? I don't think I am. But maybe I am._

_-MEANWHILE-_

Nate wasn't sure why he was taking his Spartans upwards. It just felt like it was the right decision. Thus far they had encountered no resistance, but he had a feeling he had been warned about defense systems. He wasn't sure. He couldn't remember.

It was an odd feeling, being unable to remember what had happened or how they had arrived wherever the hell they were. Andromeda was not exactly being helpful in piecing it together, either. She kept talking nonsense about something called a Monitor, and Forerunners, and teleporting, and being inside the planet. That was utterly impossible. She was too young to go rampant, but maybe whatever had caused Nate and his Spartans to forget had scrambled her processors.

_"My processors are _fine_, thank you very much!"_

"You're going on and on and on about utter nonsense, Andi! What am I supposed to think?"

_"You're supposed to trust me."_

"I don't trust AIs full stop, you know that."

_"Fine."_

"Three," Nate said, turning his attention to Lin. "Can you determine any reason for this mass memory loss?"

"Absolutely nothing, Lead," Lin responded crisply. "Scans indicate no physical trauma."

"So… what happened?"

"Frankly, I have no idea. I sure hope you know where you're taking us."

"So do I," Nate admitted. "Six… do you still have the artifact?"

"Yes, sir," Zeke confirmed. "It's glowing again."

"Take point. Follow your gut instinct… and the artifact."

"Sir!"

Nate dropped back to the second-in-command's position, level with Jeod, who glanced at him uneasily but said nothing. Nate shrugged and tried to look like he knew what he was doing. That was much easier said than done. Unfortunately, while he knew _his_ team trusted him even if he wasn't sure, he wasn't sure Jeod's team did. Trust was everything in an unfamiliar environment.

The fiasco aboard the _Devastation_ had taught Nate that he could trust Jeod. But had it taught Jeod that he could trust Nate? Nate had no answer to that.

Everyone was out of order in the formation. Lin was where Eli normally stood, right next to Nate. Eli was up the back. Zeke was, according to Nate's orders, on point. Nate was where he always ran if someone else was being pointman for a while. Interspersed between his own team members were the members of Team Platinum.

It was, Nate thought, a frighteningly accurate representation of his own state of mind. He felt stronger mentally than he could recall feeling in quite some time, but all out of order and scrambled. A rather odd feeling, he reflected, but not unfamiliar.

Zeke muttered something about being tired of the inside of this planet. Nate smiled at that. They all liked the _outside_, but the inside was something else entirely.

They came to a door. Zeke paused, confused, then slotted the artifact into a receptacle that was just the perfect shape to take it. The door chimed, then opened into a tunnel. Nate instantly recognized UNSC ammunition crates.

"Stock up here," he ordered. "Take as much as you can carry. Chances are this is an Insurrectionist storage area. Six, I have point."

_-ELI-_

Eli didn't like the feel of this tunnel. He, like the others, reloaded his weapons then filled his ammunition compartments from the crates lining the walls.

"Lead," he said, "I don't like this."

Nate nodded his agreement. "Nor do I. Unfortunately without that Monitor we can't teleport back to the surface… we have to go the long way."

* * *

**AN: Sorry this is so short and so long in coming! My muse totally died halfway through the chapter and it's taken this long for it to return. I still haven't got much "on Haven" muse though, so I might skip forward a little ways...**

**As always please critique. Halo isn't mine, characters [bar canon references] and storyline are.**


	24. Ch 23

Nate glanced at Zeke suddenly.

"Sir, I just got contact with the _Devastation_! Shall I patch them through?" Zeke reported.

"Affirmative, Six," Nate said.

"Angel Team, come in, do you copy?"

"Solid copy, _Devastation_. This is Angel Leader. Go ahead."

"We have a solid reading on your location, Angel Leader. Orders just came through from ONI… we're deploying full combat force. The General has orders for you."

"Roger that, standing by for orders."

Anderson's voice came through next. "Angel Leader, this is Delta Actual. Intelligence suggests there is a high-priority target very close to your present location. Tatianna Makarova is their top engineer for anti-Spartan tech. She will be heavily defended. You will capture her. Avoid killing her at all costs – though you may kill as many of her guards as you wish. Backup will be a long time coming. Tread carefully."

"Affirmative, sir. Do you need us to clear an el-zee?"

"Negative, Sierra. Stay frosty, and wait for my word to proceed. Delta out."

Nate turned to his Spartans, gathering them with a gesture. "We have updated orders. This is no normal kill-or-capture mission. Our target today is far more valuable to the UNSC and ONI alive. We are to avoid killing her at all costs. Her guards will most likely be armed with specialist anti-Spartan weaponry. This is Tatianna Makarova…" he transmitted the image Anderson had sent… "and odds on, she'll be armed as well. This is no milk run."

"Backup?" Jeod asked.

"None at this point in time. That's right, Spartans, we're walking into the heart of a rebel installation, causing carnage, making a hell of a lot of noise, and somehow walking out with their top techie in tow… without dying, and without letting _her_ die. It won't be easy."

"Oi vey," Eli said quietly. "You're not kidding. Any idea how many we're dealing with?"

"We haven't got much in the way of intel… Andi?"

"Approximate estimates at this point in time twenty thousand. The majority are non-combat personnel, however all can and will use a pistol if necessary."

"Shit," Lin swore. She never swore; Nate looked at her quizzically. She shrugged and elaborated. "Twenty thousand is a hell of a lot, considering we have no backup, and I assume no air support either."

"No worries," Nate said. "I have a plan."

_-LATER-_

"You're crazy," Jeod said teasingly. "Absolutely bonkers."

"That's all right," Nate replied. "All the best people are."

"I think this is a stroke of genius," Eli cut in, puffing a little with the weight of the bomb he was carrying. "Who'd have thought we could cobble this thing together from spare parts and rockets?"

"I still say you're out of your mind," Jeod responded cheerfully.

"Whatever works!" Zeke said, his grin evident in his voice.

Nate shook his head and kept moving. The bomb was slowing all of them down. Eli was carrying it because he was the best at stealth, so could hide, if he had to, despite the bulky, heavy thing weighing him down. Nate gave the signal.

Eli and Zeke split off down a side passage. They would plant the bomb, light the fuse, then run like hell. The whole plan hinged on that going smoothly, to cause as much chaos and confusion as possible and hopefully eliminate a good portion of the rebels in the area. Nate had already notified Anderson, who had then notified the ground teams and warned them to keep their distance until they saw an explosion.

Nate heard footsteps up ahead. He gave the halt order instinctively, and then used hand signals to order the group to fan out and ensure their weapons were silenced. The patrol rounded the bend. Nate gave the order to open fire, then did so himself, picking off enemies with neat shots to the head and heart. It was only a six man patrol so in less time than it took the average human to register a threat, the Spartans had already eliminated the small group of rebels. Nate ordered them back into formation, then got moving again.

Time passed. Nate's mission clock indicated that time frame was approximately thirty minutes. This was too easy… it was not going to stay that way for long.

"The package is in position," Eli reported. "Six and I have reached minimum safe distance. We will detonate on your signal."

"Trigger when ready," Nate said. "Then get your asses to my position."

"Fire in the hole in three… two… one!" The facility shook around them and a large crack opened up in a wall. A few seconds passed before the muffled sound of a massive explosion made its way to Nate's ears. "Lead, the bomb is detonated. Cynisca estimates three to four thousand casualties; we planted it near the mess and it's mealtime."

"Move on up, Spartans. Destroy anything that gets in your way."

"Roger that, we're Oscar Mike."

_-LATER-_

Tatianna Makarova was, as Nate had expected, armed to the teeth, and surrounded by guards who were even more heavily armed. There were only five of them, but each was bristling with weapons easily powerful enough to take down a Spartan with a single shot.

Nate and his Spartans were crouched around a vent, watching and listening to the conversation. There was a lot of irrelevant gabble about the explosion, among other topics, and finally one of the guards steered the conversation towards an evacuation. The facility was crumbling because of the force of the explosion and Makarova needed to get out, fast, before the whole place collapsed.

"Two, take Three and Six and find us a ride out of here. Platinum, you're on me, let's see if we can't take advantage of their evacuation plan…"

Seven acknowledgement lights blinked green in his HUD. Eli, Lin and Zeke moved swiftly and silently away, commencing a recon pattern.

"Listen to me, Zac," Makarova insisted, suddenly raising her voice. "That data is _vital_! There is no choice. We simply must retrieve it before we leave."

"I cannot allow that, ma'am," the guard responded, with a level of calm Nate hadn't seen before. "The damage in that sector is too great."

"You don't understand! If that information falls into UNSC hands, it will mean the end of the Liberation Front! Alek's pet must be kept secret for as long as possible. Do you want their entire fleet on our doorstep? No? Well – that is what will happen if they find out what it is that Aleksandr is gloating about!"

_Aleksandr,_ Nate thought. _That must be 'General' Romanov, the leader of the Liberation. Hmm. He _has_ been rather smug of late._

"Makarova is on first-name terms with Romanov," he said softly to Jeod. "She's more important than I thought. No wonder ONI wants her alive."

"So what's this 'pet' she mentioned? 'Pet' implies a living thing. Or person."

Nate shrugged. "No idea. It's possible she might be referring to something none of us wants to think about… a rogue Spartan… which might explain where the Solo went."

"If the rebels have themselves a Spartan…" Jeod didn't quite suppress a shudder at the idea. Nate knew how he felt.

"That explains the inordinate amount of damage they did during their last attack on Reach. Nobody saw anything unusual, but if their Spartan knows what he's doing…"

"Of course it's just speculation," Jeod said, to justify the conversation to whoever ended up reviewing the helmet cams. "Pure conjecture."

Nate nodded, then paused. "They're on the move. Let's go!"

He lifted the vent cover – Zeke had loosened the fastening already – and slipped through, landing silent and catlike on the floor. Jeod followed, and then Corey, Brent, and finally, Leo. Nate used hand signals to assign one guard to each Spartan, then to remind Team Platinum to keep it quiet and make it quick.

He held up three fingers on his left hand, then counted them down, and finally pulled his fist down to signal his mark. Nate moved swiftly, combat knife in hand, to slit his target's throat. Then, firmly but carefully, so as not to hurt her, he grabbed Makarova's arms and pinned them behind her back. Leo and Brent were still grappling with their targets, and Brent's broke free; Nate spun Makarova to use her as a human shield.

"Surrender, or she dies," he growled over his helmet speakers. The speakers added a robotic note to his voice and made him sound even more deadly. The threat was empty, but the guards wouldn't know that. "Make a single move towards your comms, and she dies."

The prisoner struggled. Nate squeezed until she cried out and stopped fighting him. The guard reached for his gun, and Brent and Corey leapt on the rebel in the same moment, both wielding knives. In seconds, the second-to-last guard was dead, and a half-second later, the very last one suffered the same fate.

"Careful, careful," Nate reminded Jeod, who was getting a little too rough patting Makarova down and confiscating her weapons and comm unit. "ONI won't be impressed if we deliver damaged goods."

"Yes, sir," Jeod confirmed. "The data she was talking about… do you want it?"

"Anderson will," Nate said, nodding. "I hate to ask this of you… Platinum Four, on me, we're fetching that data. Platinum Leader, I'm going to trust you to keep the prisoner contained without injuring her… and to get her out of here alive. Move quickly."

"How long do we have?" Jeod asked.

"Five minutes," Andromeda replied swiftly. "If that long. I don't like how the main support beam looks on my scans."

"Roger that," Jeod confirmed. "I'll see you topside, Angel Leader, Platinum Four."

_-LATER-_

Nate picked through what was left of the tech room, searching for anything that might be of use. The data Makarova had referred to was his primary objective, but a few of the prototype weapons looked promising; he took two of them and gave a few others to Leo to carry.

"I have a location for you," Andi said suddenly. "It is in the next facility, five days' fast march from our current location. There is a tunnel. I have placed a waypoint."

Nate grunted an affirmative. "Platinum Four, on me. We're on the move again. Andi, see if you can get contact with Delta Actual."

"Confirmed. Contact established. Patching you through."

"Angel Leader, this is Delta Actual. Proceed."

Nate paused a moment, thinking of what to say, then started speaking. "Delta Actual, we have discovered the presence of data described as 'vital' to the war effort. Platinum Four and I are en route to obtain it. If we cannot find transport it will be several days before we will be within contact range again."

"Confirmed, Angel Leader. Please advise, has the target been captured?"

"Affirmative, Delta Actual. Angel Team and Platinum Lead, Two and Three are en route out of the facility as I speak."

"Angel Leader, solid copy. Watch yourself down there. That explosion did a lot of damage to the underground superstructure. Delta Actual out."

Nate silently led the way towards the waypoint Andi had placed in his HUD. It was nowhere near five days' fast march away, which meant she was guiding him to the shortest route, rather than marking the objective itself.

"Think we'll be able to find a 'hog, sir?" Leo asked in a tone that suggested he really didn't care either way.

"Not a 'hog, but hopefully there'll be something down in the tunnel. You don't make a tunnel then make normal people run for five days."

"Fair," Leo said, and they lapsed back into silence.

This was going to be one hell of a run.

* * *

**AN: Not totally sure I'm 100% happy with this chapter, but there's drama ahead, and we're finally getting to the point. The rogue Spartan is just a concept in *this* story, he comes into play later on in the timeline and is the "main villain" if you will of a roleplay, based on my Spartans and the ****_Devastation_****, and including a few other Spartans, a lot of Marines, some UNSC officers, and a few ONI personnel. If anybody is interested, PM me your email address and I'll email you the link.**

**Thus far the prologue has felt weird and out of place, but context is coming. Perhaps it shouldn't have taken 23 chapters to do so though! Expect a lot of jumping around of points of view in the next chapter or two, there are 4 places to be all at once and all of them are relevant.**

**Cookies to whoever guesses the identities of the ally and the enemy in the unexpected places, and where they come in/how they show their true colours.**

**Please review!**

**Halo isn't mine, characters and storyline are [bar the occasional canon reference].**


	25. Ch 24

Nate was going to be furious. Jeod frowned to himself, shifting the prisoner's weight on his shoulder. Undamaged… well, that was open to interpretation when the order came from a Spartan, but things went into a grey area when it was regarding an unarmed but very dangerous prisoner. By most standards, unconscious meant injured, especially when a large chunk of concrete falling on the head was how a person became unconscious.

"Lead," Corey said, "we gotta hurry. This place is coming down, and fast."

Jeod nodded and kicked it up a gear, still trying not to jostle the unconscious Makarova. Normal human skulls didn't respond well to being repeatedly banged against angular MJOLNIR armor, and Nate had said no injuries. He'd already failed on that count but was not about to make things worse.

There was an ominous crack, then a rumble. Jeod felt the floor shake; the rumbling and the shaking didn't let up. The facility was collapsing.

"Got a status update from one of the teams topside," Brent said. "It's all out war up there. Trench warfare, like the first Great Earth War. Remember learning about that?"

"It'll be bloody, then," Corey muttered. "Great. As if we can afford more losses in this damn war."

Jeod nodded. "We have to get Makarova out, but we have to assist. We might be able to save a few thousand men. I don't want to split us up any more than we already have…"

"Don't forget there's three Angels around here somewhere," Brent pointed out. "I'm going to try to make contact with them. They might have found a way out of this junkheap."

"Good idea." Jeod nodded again, then lapsed into silence, kicking up his speed another gear and shifting Makarova so her head wouldn't bang against his armor.

_-MEANWHILE-_

"I don't like this," Lin said softly. "I feel like something's going to happen to Lead. Something real bad."

Eli shared her feeling, but he wasn't about to say that. There was no point in going to look for Nate and the others. Chances were they wouldn't be able to get far anyway. The collapse was quite far-reaching. For now Nate was ok. Eli still had a strong reading on everyone in TEAMBIO, and TACMAP pinpointed positions. Platinum Team – with the exception of Leo, Platinum Four – weren't far away. Nate and Leo were deep into the installation, on the other side of the collapse, and going deeper.

"Lead can handle himself," he eventually said, with more confidence than he felt. Something was definitely terribly wrong.

"Angel Two, this is Team Platinum," Brent's voice came over the comms. "Requesting rendezvous point. Have you found transport?"

"There seems to be no transport in this section of the facility, Platinum," Eli replied smoothly. "I will have Angel Six send you coordinates. AI Cynisca will place waypoints to assist with your route. The tunnels here are confusing at the best of times."

Zeke took over seamlessly. "Transmitting coordinates."

"Received," Brent confirmed. "We're on our way."

"Confirmed, Platinum," Eli said. "Angel out."

"So," Zeke said, "I suppose I should contact the _Devastation_."

"That would be wise," Eli agreed. He wondered, while he ran, whether it was 'wise' to stand around waiting for Platinum to reach the rendezvous marker. There wasn't much time. This facility was coming down very soon, one way or another. Not for the first time, he cursed Nate and his crazy plans.

_-IN ORBIT-_

Anderson swore and threw his datapad across the bridge. This battle was going badly. His Spartans were underground and therefore unable to assist with the combat, and even if the underground part wasn't an issue, they had a priority objective. Damn ONI. Damn them to hell.

"Sir," the comms officer said carefully. "Angel Six has made contact."

"Patch him through," Anderson growled. The comms officer started to protest. "Do it. NOW!"

"Confirmed, patching him through."

"Delta Actual, this is Angel Six. Mission accomplished, sir. Request coordinates for pickup."

"Transmitting. Mission accomplished status confirmed. Deliver the package, then assist with the war effort topside."

"Roger that, Delta Actual. Dropping out of contact range. Angel out."

Anderson leaned against his command panel and let out a frustrated sigh. This was the part of the missions he hated. His Spartans disappeared from the sensors, and he had no way of telling if they were still alive… much less getting an ETA. "Christopher."

"Yes, General?"

"Fire up the scanners. See if you can find my Spartans. I can't see them on TACMAP anymore."

Christopher's holographic form nodded. "Certainly, sir. Scanning now."

A globe appeared in front of Anderson, in the main viewscreen. A dot appeared, and the main viewscreen zoomed in on the globe until a detailed map appeared, showing the state the facility was in now. Christopher overlaid it with a schematic of what the facility had looked like before the explosion. The single dot split into eight; two were moving into a tunnel, three moving towards the surface, and another three apparently moving to connect with the other group of three.

"Tag them," Anderson growled. Labels appeared next to each dot. The pair was Angel Leader and Platinum Four. The first group of three was Angel Two, Three, and Six, and the second group of three was Platinum Lead, Two, and Three. All as per communications had suggested. "Internal, deploy a Pelican to Landing Zone Delta. They are to pick up a top secret highly valuable package and deliver supplies to the Spartan team that will be meeting them."

"Yes, sir. Sending pilot callsign Thunder."

"Good."

_-THE TUNNELS-_

"This is starting to feel like a bad idea," Nate muttered to himself. He knew he could trust Leo, but wished he'd had the forethought to keep a member of his own team with him. It was bad enough that he'd had to split the team at all, and worse that he was now down in the tunnels with no contact with anybody but a Spartan he barely knew.

"Orders are orders, sir," Leo reminded him. Nate fixed the younger Spartan with a long look, one of exasperation; Anderson liked to try to force him onto one course of action, and had been successful a few times – BLITZKRIEG was one example – but 'orders are orders' did not, as a general rule, apply to Angel Team. Nate followed orders as best he could as much of the time as possible, but it wasn't like he could be court-martialed for insubordination. It was thrown out every time someone tried, before the judge even looked at the case. So if something was a really stupid idea, he wasn't going to do it. Except a few rare occasions when he had caved to Anderson to avoid a really nasty situation.

Anderson had absolute power over every single person stationed aboard the _Devastation_. He could make Nate's life hell if he wanted to. Nate sighed and forced his thoughts back to the present.

"Regardless," he eventually said, "we can't get out of this place back that way. The main support beam collapsed, which means there's no way through. The only way out is through the other facility."

"Incorrect," Andi said. "There are numerous ventilation shafts, some of which still have ladders despite the rebels' efforts to fortify the infrastructure. We are half a mile underground, so it would be quite a climb, but it is more than possible to escape these tunnels without running for five days."

Nate lifted one shoulder in half a shrug. "We have orders. Unless something big comes up, we have a job to do."

"Sir," Leo said, "over there! Transport."

Nate saw the bright yellow flatbed the moment Leo pointed it out. "You ride in the back and act as a gunner. I'll drive."

_-RALLY POINT ALPHA-_

Eli slowed his pace, then came to a halt. Lin and Zeke did the same. There was no sign of Platinum yet, but TACMAP showed that they weren't too far off. It would be good to have six Spartans again… even if they weren't all members of Angel Team. He didn't like it when Nate split the team, but he knew that Nate hated to split them up even more. Needs must.

Lin accidentally-on-purpose bumped him with her shoulder. "Penny for your thoughts?"

Eli didn't understand that saying. Of course he knew that a penny was an old unit of currency, but it was still an odd thing to say. Especially now that the penny had been out of use for centuries. "Quiet, Three. We have work to do."

They didn't, but the comms were for orders… not idle chatter. Nate was very casual about it when they weren't under radio silence, but Eli didn't like confrontation, and for some reason HIGHCOM were harder on him than they were on Nate. Idle chatter could wait.

"Angel Team, friendlies approaching; hold your fire," Jeod said over the comms.

"Solid copy, Platinum Leader." Eli flicked his weapon's safety on; he knew Lin and Zeke would do the same without having to be ordered. "Weapons are cold, repeat, our weapons are cold."

"Affirmative, Angel. Going cold."

Jeod, Corey and Brent came into view around a corner. Eli slid two fingers across his faceplate in the Spartan smile, and then allowed himself to actually smile when Jeod responded in kind. They might not have known Platinum for long, but to the members of Angel Team, these Spartans were brothers.

_-TUNNELS-_

Nate floored the accelerator, fumbling a little with the gears. He wasn't used to stick shift. The truck jolted through an uncomfortable gear change, groaning in protest.

"It won't - get us - even - half way," Leo said over a closed comm channel, his speech stilted because of the jolts and shudders the truck kept giving. "I take it this - is you, I can't - drive a stick either, but - that engine - doesn't sound happy."

"No," Nate agreed. "Hold on tight, this is about to get a little rough!"

He spun the steering wheel, throwing the truck into a violent swerve and narrowly avoiding a large chunk of rock that broke free. This tunnel was coming down, just like the rest of the facility.

_-LATER; DEVASTATION-_

"Where are they, Christopher? Get me their locations! NOW!"

"Yes, sir. Scanning. Nothing. Firing up deep seismic scanners. Charging."

"Hurry up, Christopher…" Anderson paced the bridge, alternating between chewing his fingernails and chewing the end of a lit cigar. To hell with the no smoking rule. This was his ship. He would do what he liked.

"The other six have delivered the package," the comms officer declared. "They're joining the battle on-surface as I speak."

"Deep scanners at fifty percent."

Anderson muttered a string of curses. That place was crumbling, and he didn't know if his best Spartan was still inside. Without Angel Leader, there would be no Angel Team. Without Angel Team, there was no use for such a large destroyer – the UNSC would scrap her for materials for smaller vessels. Without the _Devastation_, neither the UNSC nor ONI had any use for Anderson.

If they didn't have any use for him, General Anderson knew he would be forcibly retired. That wasn't going to happen.

_-PLANETSIDE-_

Quite some distance from the battlefield, an unusually tall and heavily-armored rebel lay prone, watching through his scope as events unfolded and reporting to the Russian beside him whenever something important happened.

Aleksandr Romanov hissed in fury when his ace-in-the-hole reported Makarova's capture. Tatianna was smarter than that. All she had to do was bite down on the cyanide capsule and the oppressors' plans would be foiled. Her data, her research, her prototypes… they all would die with her.

"Take the shot," he ordered.

"Sir?" his puppet said flatly, asking for confirmation with a heavy Rusko-Czech accent.

"Do it. We cannot allow her to be taken alive."

Israel Dragunov nodded sharply and adjusted his aim, placing the crosshairs over the short woman who was his target. This was a difficult shot, but not impossible. He waited until she was onboard the UNSC Pelican and the hatch was beginning to close, then squeezed the trigger. A tense heartbeat passed, then the armor-piercing round impacted, blowing Tatianna Makarova's head apart a moment before the hatch sealed.

Nobody would know she was dead until the pilot checked the troop bay camera, or they unsealed the hatch aboard the _UNSC Devastation_.

Israel suddenly spotted a familiar shade of green amongst the other enemy troops. Spartans. There were three he didn't recognize, and three he would know anywhere. Eli, Lin and Zeke were there. His heart stopped, and he readjusted his aim, placing the crosshairs directly over the medic's head. Kill her first and she wouldn't be able to bring her brothers back…

"Not… yet…" Romanov told him. "If you take any more shots today they will triangulate our position, Dragunov. We mustn't risk them confirming their suspicions just yet. You know as well as I do that ONI will set their best wolves on you if they know you are with the Liberation."

"They have their suspicions," Israel said. "You heard them. When they were talking in the air vent, and my bug picked up the conversation."

"While that may be true, do you really think the wolves will listen to the sheep they stalk? These Spartans you still foolishly insist on calling your brothers and sister, they are weak! Too strong to blindly follow those who would kill them for a single mistake, too weak to join we who would have a fair and just government for each system independent of the UNSC's oppression! No. Our oppressors' arrogance makes them weak and foolish – that they would ignore the words of Spartans. Stupidity indeed."

"Yes, sir," Israel said blandly. It was best to just shut up and let Alek rant. Especially in situations like this one. Iz disagreed. He thought ONI would sit up and take notice. It was, after all, what he and Angel Team had been created for.

"Come," Alek suddenly cut off his own rant. "We must evacuate our important personnel. This battle is lost… but the war – ah, the war! – is far from over."

Israel glanced once more down his scope. The General was right. With the six Spartans in the fight, the UNSC personnel were fighting more fiercely, on the offensive now. The Liberation troops were well and truly on the back foot and being swiftly forced into a corner. There was no salvaging this. Iz wanted off Haven anyway. For good this time. "Havoc, sir?"

"Yes, Israel. I am invoking Codeword Havoc. Come; let us cause anarchy at the seat of our enemy's power! I am putting you in charge of my personal dreadnought. You will lead the assault."

"Very good, sir," Iz said, allowing a feral grin to cross his face. It seeped into his voice as well, as he spoke. Havoc was a death-or-glory mission. Israel always performed best when the stakes were highest, and the troops would leap to his aid without being asked.

With a Spartan on their side, the Liberation was unstoppable.

* * *

**AN: Sorry, this one's a bit behind schedule, but LOOK - we finally broke the 63k mark for words, not including author notes. As of right now, including the start of the next chapter, I have 63,096 words. It doesn't flow well... but heck, with all the jumping around that NEEDED to be done, it was never going to.**

**Enter Israel, who is going to be just a watcher for the time being. Codeword Havoc will take years to properly organize, with the rebel fleet scattered [deliberately] and the Liberation not being an especially organized operation anyway because the vast majority of its troops are civilians who are sick of the taxes and conscriptions forced on them by the UNSC. Iz isn't quite what he seems, though. We'll explore that later, maybe, if I have time to squeeze it in with the 5 other sub-plots and the main plot.**

**As always please review! HUGE cookies to whoever figures out the biggest mystery of the whole plot - who's the enemy in the unexpected place? - and any thoughts of what you would like to see in future are more than welcome. I write for me, but what's the point in writing with no audience?**

**Halo isn't mine, all original characters/storyline facets are.**


	26. Ch 25

The truck coughed, then sputtered, and finally gave up. Nate slammed a fist down on the dash, smashing it and shattering the windshield in the process. "Come on, you piece of crap! There's plenty of fuel in the tank!"

"Sir, if I may," Leo said, hopping smoothly down from the truck bed, "that sounded like the engine seized. It wasn't running like it was low on lube, though, so…"

"Doesn't matter the cause," Nate said, also getting out. He slammed the door shut so hard the window in it shattered. "Junker failed on us. We're on foot from here on out. Andi, where are we at?"

"You won't like this…"

Nate's stomach dropped to his boots. That was never a good sign. "Go on."

"Four days' fast march, still, and I can only get one of you past the next checkpoint."

Leo glanced at him, then at the floor, then back at him again. Nate sighed. "Go back to your team, Platinum Four. Fighting sounds fierce up above, they'll need you."

"Sir," Leo confirmed, heading up a nearby ladder that went up a ventilation shaft.

Nate was alone. He put that fact from his mind and started running.

_-TOPSIDE-_

"Sir!" Zeke barked. "I have contact with Platinum Four! They have run into a checkpoint. Andromeda can only get one through. So Platinum Four is coming topside to help."

"Good," Eli grunted. "One more good Spartan. Don't go easy on these Innie bastards, Spartans, not even to leave Platinum Four something to do! Hit 'em hard. Take the fuckers down!"

"SIR!" five voices bellowed at him over the comms. Eli frowned. Lin wasn't happy. It wasn't easy for her to fight. Not the way it was easy for Eli and the others. She hated killing. But with too few Spartans on the field everyone had to pull their weight. Nobody was covering for the medic today.

A shotgun blast thumped into his chest, the majority of the force and lethality of it dispelled by his chest, but it was enough to force his mind back to the task at hand. His Spartans could handle themselves. Eli needed to worry about keeping himself alive to lead them in Nate's stead.

_-DEVASTATION-_

"I don't know where they keep coming from," the comms officer commented. "All these damn rebels. I didn't think there were so many."

Anderson nodded. "We've got this one in the bag, but it'll take a while. Christopher, estimates?"

"Five to six days, General."

The readout on the main viewscreen definitely backed up the AI's words. Anderson hadn't seen rebels come out of the woodwork quite like this before.

"How's the scan?" the navigation officer asked. Ruslan Orlov, a promising officer but under-recognized. Anderson liked the Russian, but personal feelings about his bridge officers had no place in his mind while he was on duty. Off-duty was a different story. He spared a glance at one of the weapons officers, with whom he was enjoying a rather steamy affair.

"Ninety percent charge, sir. Ninety-five. Ninety-nine. One hundred percent. Scanning now." Christopher's words reminded Anderson that he was on duty, and the General bit the inside of his cheek to dispel his rather unprofessional thoughts about Lieutenant Patel.

There was a brief silence filled only by the faint hum of the extensive and complicated computer systems. A few new markers appeared on the map.

"I have found them," Christopher announced, making two tags blink. "They have separated, sir."

"Never mind the Spartans," Anderson growled, eyes locked on a signature he didn't want to be seeing. "What in the hell is _that_?"

"Grammar, sir," Christopher said automatically. "Readings suggest that is a rebel flagship – probably a dreadnought – which is at this stage the largest Insurrectionist vessel we have detected to date."

He couldn't let it get away. Anderson stared hard at Christopher's holographic avatar. "Engage it. Cripple it. Drive that fucker planetside. We're taking them down if it kills us!"

"Negative, General," Christopher disagreed. "We haven't the firepower; after our engagement with that Covenant vessel we are operating at only eighty percent capacity and weapons systems at seventy."

_-MEANWHILE-_

"Is that everyone?" Alek asked of the eight-foot-four man at his side.

"Affirmative, sir," Israel replied. "All key personnel are onboard."

"Did you give the order?"

"Yes, sir."

"Excellent. Let's get out of here… but have the weapons techs take a passing shot at the _Devastation_."

"Yes, sir. I will give them the order."

_-TUNNELS, LATER-_

Nate ran, mind and body numb to the shuddering and rumbling as more explosives were set off and more of the tunnel system collapsed. The fight topside was none of his concern. Eli was more than capable of handling the team, and of working with Jeod and Platinum.

These tunnels were dangerous for more reasons than possible collapse. The stabbing pain in his left thigh reminded him with every stride of the possibility of running into rebel soldiers. It was a clean wound, with an entry and exit, in a fleshy part of his body, so it was of little concern and would heal well. Nate had had to cauterize it, to stop the bleeding, and had almost blacked out from the pain of that, but now it was unimportant. There was no bullet lodged in his leg.

And then there were frightening possibilities, half-remembered, of a time before humans had colonized this planet. Nate wondered at that. Now and then something flashed across his field of vision, there but not there. He wasn't going crazy. Not Covenant, not human, but somewhere in between…

He kept the thoughts to himself rather than asking Andi about the history of this place. She would have a better idea than Nate did, but she would also have to report that he was seeing things that weren't there, and that was never a good thing for HIGHCOM to know.

Gradually he lost himself to the rhythm of his footsteps, and didn't notice when the sounds of battle and collapse faded into the kind of deep silence that swallowed all sound.

_-DEVASTATION-_

"Don't let them get off a shot!" Anderson roared. "MAC charge?!"

"Fifty percent, sir," Patel replied in that calm, professional tone she only ever used when she was put under massive amounts of pressure.

"Lieutenant Geordy, spin up missile batteries Alpha through Foxtrot! Hit them!"

"Yes, sir."

Christopher appeared above his projector again. "Calculating firing vectors. Missiles ready. Fire at will."

"Firing!" Geordy barked. The dull _whump_ of sixty missiles firing at once resonated through the _Devastation_'s superstructure.

Anderson watched, chewing on the end of his cigar, as the missiles streaked towards the rebel ship. It had to have a name, but whatever the rebels called it, they hadn't painted anything on the hull except a bright red war-stripe.

The missiles impacted. Anderson had intended to cripple the vessel but the damage was frustratingly minimal, and he could still see the tell-tale signs of the enemy ship's MAC being charged to fire. The _Devastation_ was designed to hold up to multiple MAC rounds but that had never been put to the test. "They're going to be fully charged before we are," he grunted at Christopher.

"Agreed," Christopher said. "Preparing to commence evasive maneuvers. If nothing else I can minimize the damage."

"I would prefer that you avoided damage to my ship altogether, Christopher."

"Impossible. We can't move fast enough to evade a MAC round completely. The best I can do is glancing blow. We will have to seal off a couple of Sections and vent atmosphere, but we will still be slipspace ready."

"Then do that. Clear those Sections of all personnel, then seal them off and pull a vacuum ahead of time."

"Yes, General. MAC charge at sixty percent. Enemy MAC charge estimated to be seventy percent." Christopher paused, and then spoke over the PA. "Attention all personnel, evacuate Sections Echo and Romeo immediately. This is not a drill."

_-PLANETSIDE-_

"Why won't you die?" Eli growled, emptying his rifle into an unusually tough rebel. He had anticipated this. Rumble-drugs. Push the rebels into an impossible corner and this was what they always did.

"Angel Two, duck!" Jeod barked. Eli reacted almost before he heard the words, dropping to a prone position, and one of Leo's rockets streaked through the space where he was just a moment earlier to impact one of the few rebel fire-teams that still held formation.

"Nice shot, Platinum Four," Eli said appreciatively. "Next time, make sure I'm _not_ in the way before you fire."

"Sorry, Angel Two," Leo replied, unrepentant, "but you weren't in the way when I pulled the trigger."

Eli grunted his understanding, pulling a frag grenade from his grenade case and priming it. "Frag out!"

"Sucks to be Raph right now," Zeke commented casually, firing as he spoke, short bursts from his modified assault rifle. "Perfect excuse to go nuts with the explosives, and he's stuck in orbit, healing."

Eli smiled to himself. The return of the customary battlefield banter was nice. Nate would have shut it down by now, but Eli wasn't Nate.

"That," he said, letting his voice take on an enthusiastic note, "is what we have Leo for."

"Amen," said Leo, tossing out two frag grenades in quick succession and then firing off another rocket.

"Ground teams, this is Delta Actual," Anderson's voice came over the command channel. "Air support is commencing another bombing run. Do not advance beyond these coordinates."

A waypoint appeared in Eli's HUD, red rather than the usual blue. The red meant 'do not approach'. It was some thirty meters away from the front-most UNSC soldiers.

Seconds passed, and then a group of Longswords streaked past overhead. A half-second later the bombs they dropped struck the dirt, and exploded, spraying dirt and blood in all directions.

Another group passed overhead, and then a third, each directly preceding another line of explosions among the rebel troops. Even with the bombers, this would take days – there were so damn many of them.

This was the brutal kind of warfare that cost more lives than it was really worth. Huge armies throwing force of numbers at one another until one ran out of men. It wasn't good battlefield strategy, but this wasn't about good battlefield strategy. It was about a message.

"Take them down," Eli growled.

"Gladly, sir," the nearest Marine said, letting off shots from his DMR as fast as he could pull the trigger.

"Taylor," Eli said, surprised. All the signs had pointed towards Taylor having died when the Covenant boarded the _Devastation_. Apparently not.

"Yes, sir. If you don't mind, sir, I might get back to killing these Insurrectionist bastards."

"Of course, soldier." Eli shrugged. He often forgot that Marines couldn't fight and chat at the same time. He wasn't used to fighting alongside them. Angel Team usually went in alone, with no hope of any sort of backup.

_-DEVASTATION-_

"Enemy MAC at one hundred percent! Commencing evasive maneuvers."

Anderson felt his heart kick into double time. This was the real test, of both his nerve, and his ship. He felt the impact of the enemy MAC round before he heard the resounding _boom_.

"Damage report!" he demanded automatically.

"As expected we have a hull breach – Sections Alpha and Romeo, as per my calculations. MAC at ninety percent. Ninety-five. Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine. One hundred. Applying firing vector. Slipspace rupture detected, they're jumping out."

"FIRE!" Anderson roared. "Don't let them get away!"

"Firing. Damn it all!"

"What?" Anderson demanded.

"Firing vector was accurate but they jumped too quickly. I missed." Christopher's holographic avatar turned to look out into what was now empty space. "They got away."

* * *

**AN: Not happy with the flow of this, but I can go back to just Nate next chapter, so it should flow a little better from there. I hope. For the first time pretty much ever, the ****_Devastation_**** loses a fight! They barely did any damage to that rebel ship, whereas that rebel ship managed to hit them hard enough to cause a hull breach in two Sections, so by definition of damage done they lost.**

**As always please review, can't improve if I don't know what's wrong.**

**Halo isn't mine, storyline and characters are [barring the occasional canon reference].**


	27. Ch 26

Nate ran with a long, loping stride that allowed him to cover a lot of ground very quickly. Even so, Andi's calculations were based on Spartan speed, not Marine speed, so it would be days and days before he saw a friendly face.

Days of solitude stretching ahead was not a nice prospect. While Nate didn't like constant company, he wasn't a big fan of being alone, either. Especially not with combat going on half a mile above him and the fact that he was inside an enemy transport tunnel without backup.

Despite the pain from the bullet wound in his thigh he kept a steady, even rhythm, using the pain to remind himself what could happen if he let himself get distracted by the quiet.

It was utterly silent inside the tunnel. He couldn't even hear his own footsteps. The only sound that reached his ears was that of his breath, an even and deep in-out that was contained within his helmet and thus could not be swallowed by the silence.

A noise from somewhere up above shattered the silence for a brief moment. Nate paused, checking the shaft above. Nothing there. He kept moving, made uncharacteristically patient by the long hours that had already passed, and the hours and days that stretched ahead.

By now he'd been on his feet for a good few days, and wasn't sure whether he was just so exhausted he was hearing things or whether there really was something out there. He wouldn't be surprised either way. The silence didn't help either – with no sound but his own breathing to use for advance warning of any enemy presence, Nate found himself on edge. Not a good state to be in for so many hours in a row.

This solitude was good for _one_ thing, at least – it left him time to think. He found his thoughts turning to Lin and wished then that he wasn't alone, but it wasn't Leo, who he'd had to send back to the surface, whose company he craved.

_-MEANWHILE-_

Lin grimaced and pumped the slide of her shotgun, part of her mind tracking the shell it ejected and the rest of it contemplating different aspects of killing the next target. She was using her medical knowledge to kill, and she hated that twisted bastardization of her skills, but it was better than standing by and letting everyone else do the fighting for her.

Plus Eli had said she had to pull her weight on this one… and Eli was in charge while Nate was down in the tunnels. Nate wouldn't mind if she sat back and only killed if she really had to, but Eli would, and so would HIGHCOM.

It was a sick kind of irony, she thought, putting heavy bore buckshot into another rebel soldier's chest. The medic's life-saving skills turned to the art of death. And it was an art form – Lin could appreciate that, even if it wasn't to her tastes. Spartans were the Picasso and the Van Gogh of the art of killing, Lin the sole exception. She was the master of the art of saving lives. Yet she, like the others, could paint the battlefield red with frightening accuracy and efficiency.

In fact her medical knowledge and skills allowed her to kill even more effectively than her fellows, though her qualms did slow her down a little.

Another pump of the shotgun slide. Lin pushed her thoughts away and concentrated on her task, blocking out the reality of it all and pretending this was another virtual reality sim. These rebels weren't real.

The Spartan's misgivings fell away and she waded into the enemy troops, pumping and shooting and pumping again as quickly as the gun could handle.

_-TUNNELS; DAYS LATER-_

A sound pulled Nate from his exhausted reverie. This far underground, the enemy was unlikely to discover his presence, and Andi kept scanning every five minutes for anything to add to the TACMAP screen.

The schematic that Nate had laid over his motion tracker was as empty as ever. The sound met his ears again and the sniper groaned. An instant later, as he expected, the lights went out.

He stopped in his tracks, completely unable to see, and activated his night vision systems. Even advanced night vision specially made for him offered very little, and the silence meant he could not navigate using his ears.

But if Nate could barely see, that gave him an advantage over anyone else he might run across. At least he could see a little bit. Unless he ran into another Spartan – unlikely – any enemy would be completely unable to see a thing. Even another Spartan would struggle to see much of anything.

All Nate could see was vague shapes, but that was enough to get around. If he saw anything that remotely resembled something that might be a threat he could switch to thermal. Unfortunately thermal vision was not an option to help him navigate because this far underground, everything was a uniform temperature. Other than human beings and other warm-blooded creatures.

He forgot, for now, about thermal, and got moving again.

"I can use the schematic to mark the lines of the walls for you?" Andi suggested.

Nate nodded and faint green lines appeared in his HUD, just enough that he could see where the walls, floor and ceiling were. What he wouldn't do right then for the VISR system the ODSTs had, he didn't like to think of… it worked like this, but was better in that it worked from readings from the suit's sensors and gave outlines based on what the sensors saw.

He pushed the if-onlys from his mind and kept on moving, trying not to feel the burning in his legs that was his body's way of telling him he was pushing himself too far. Exhaustion permeated every cell until he started to feel like it was bleeding into the circuitry of his armor and cybernetic implants. Nate was so tired, his hands and feet were numb. He wasn't quite at the threshold where his reflexes would suffer, but he wasn't far off it.

He opened up the TEAMBIO screen and selected his own stats, watching the readout for a while. His heart rate was increased from exertion, and his blood pressure was a little high, as he expected. Oxygen saturation in his blood was almost double the normal level. The levels of caffeine and wake-up stims in his system were dropping steadily. No wonder he was feeling it… he was well below his normal baseline for caffeine and as for the wake-up chemicals, he was shocked he was still able to keep his eyes open. There was almost nothing left.

The familiar sting in the crook of his elbow came a moment later, at an order thought at his neural lace, and almost immediately, a rush of energy allowed him the level of vigilance that was long-standing habit.

Nate was a sniper. He saw everything, and what he didn't see, he heard. All thoughts of exhaustion forgotten, he kept moving, pausing only to check a ventilation shaft when a shell casing fell from above right in front of his face.

_-MEANWHILE-_

"I hate not knowing," Lin said, throwing her now empty shotgun aside in favor of a dead rebel's assault rifle.

"I know what you mean," Eli agreed, moving silently and invisibly from cover to cover. "The only thing worse than not knowing is the very human tendency to imagine the worst."

Everyone was accounted for except Nate, and it was driving Lin crazy. She knew the others weren't especially comfortable having no idea where their leader was or if he was even alive, but she hadn't gone this long without talking to Nate in years… not even when he was in one of his hostile moods, which could last for anywhere up to fourteen days. Everyone else avoided him when he was in one of those moods.

"Concentrate, Three," Eli reminded her.

"Sorry, Two," she apologized, noticing for the first time that Eli had flushed out a small group of rebels and the others were working on killing the enemy. This abstraction was dangerous, but staying focused was easier said than done.

"If you can't concentrate, I'll order you back to the _Devastation_ for leave," Eli said. He didn't quite hide the note of irritation in his voice well enough. Lin looked at the ground briefly, then back down range. She wasn't a fighter, but it was better to be here, to feel like she was doing something useful, than to be stuck in orbit too far away to do anything.

Lin sighed and pushed all thoughts of Nate out of her head, concentrating instead on the art of warfare.

_-TUNNELS-_

Nate paused, his whole body trembling from the effort of staying on his feet. He was so tired… but whatever that was on the ground, it could be a threat. He switched to thermal vision and felt the zing of adrenaline banish his exhaustion. It was warm.

"Identify yourself!"

He grimaced. His throat was scratchy and his voice rough around the edges. He hadn't said a word in days, so it wasn't like he wasn't expecting it, but even so, he didn't like hearing himself sound like he had a nasty cold.

"Human. Tory! Lost. Help me?"

Nate took one wary step forwards. It was a child – a boy – which made it most likely civilian. Assuming that was correct, the child was no threat. Civilians had turned on him before, but never children, and especially not children as badly injured as this one appeared. "How in the world did you get down here?"

"Fell."

"Down the shaft?"

"Yea."

"Bull." Nate severely doubted that any civilian could survive that fall. Lin was the medic and would be able to tell him more definitively, but even so, half a mile? Humans reached terminal velocity after falling for only around six hundred feet. The injuries sustained by an unprotected human falling at terminal velocity were massive and almost certainly fatal. "Not even a Spartan could survive _that_ fall unprotected. Doesn't matter. Let's get you topside."

Screw the mission. Screw Anderson, and screw ONI. Civilians always took priority. Even if this boy was refusing to tell the truth about how he had gotten down here. Nate helped the child onto his back; the kid clung like a limpet, fingers hooked into any place they would fit.

"According to this schematic the nearest shaft is the one the shell casing fell down. Unfortunately that shell casing proves there is combat around the entrance to the shaft, and therefore it is unsuitable," Andi said. "If you continue along towards the other facility, the next shaft along should be clear."

"Then the next shaft along, it is. Mark it with a waypoint." The little blue marker appeared in Nate's HUD, and the distance counter told him that it was just over a mile away. While that wasn't much for a Spartan, it felt like it might as well have been on the other side of the planet. His body was about to give up on him. Nate was so exhausted he would welcome sleep, regardless of the nightmares.

But he had a civilian to save. His body's wants and needs could wait. Extreme fatigue was nothing to poke a stick at, but Nate was stubborn enough that he could ignore it for now. He got moving again, loping along with the child – Tory, he reminded himself, the kid had a name – whimpering and whooping all at once.

_-DEVASTATION-_

"You're telling me, Christopher, that they have _civilian prisoners_? Comms, inform all our ground troops!"

Christopher sighed. General Anderson was far too stressed. Perhaps it was time for the First Officer to take charge. He briefly reviewed protocol. It was well past time. It concerned him that the First Officer stood some distance away from Anderson, clearly torn between duty and being too intimidated to do anything.

It was frustrating not having the authority to order Anderson to take a few days' stress leave and let Brigadier General Orson Rikke take over. Christopher was, unfortunately, just an AI. He was in charge of the ship itself, but none of the personnel she carried. And he took orders from both Anderson, and Rikke.

"Yes, General, they have seven, according to this file. Ranging in age from five years of age – a small girl taken from her home on Reach – to seventy-eight years of age, a former Admiral of the UNSC retired nearly twenty years now. Three children, three young adults, and the former Admiral."

"Comms, I want you to inform the Spartans they have a rescue mission. Internal, send a Pelican, I want those Spartans picked up and delivered to the door of the prison facility!"

_-SURFACE-_

"That's the facility Lead was headed to," Zeke commented.

"Perhaps we'll rendezvous with him there," Lin said hopefully.

"Perhaps." Eli wasn't willing to bet on anything. Too much was uncertain. There were too many uncontrollable variables and it was simply impossible to predict a situation he barely understood. "Here comes the Pelican. Spartans, disengage and move to Landing Zone Bravo."

Six acknowledgement lights winked green in his HUD. Eli led the group to where the Pelican was now coming in to land. The pilot set it down lightly and the seven Spartans piled into the troop bay, each taking up position in his or her favored spot. Unsurprisingly, Lin immediately started packing medical supplies into the hardcases and compartments in her armor.

_-TUNNELS-_

Nate was using his armor to haul himself and the civilian child up the ladder. His muscles were too exhausted to do much of their own accord. Every few rungs he paused for a moment to gather his strength, then started moving again. Light was dimly filtering down from the opening above, finally enough that Nate could deactivate his night vision and still see enough that he wasn't feeling his way.

Tory's grip on his armor had loosened quite a bit, but the child was conscious and responded quickly when Nate asked him a question. He wasn't volunteering much, but then, neither was Nate. In this manner Nate had determined that Tory was nine years old, had a mother, father and sister from whom he had been taken, and was from Eridanus II. Tory, meanwhile, knew that Nate was a Commander, and was the leader of a team of six Spartans who weren't quite like 'normal' Spartans. It wasn't much, but it was all that Nate could say.

"They have a Spartan too," Tory said suddenly, out of nowhere. "The rebels, I mean. That's who took me. He told me they would make me one too. That was three years ago. And it was hard, but I did everything they told me, even though they hit me a lot anyway. When you attacked the other base they let me go… I think they thought I would fall down a shaft and die. Well I fell down a shaft, but I didn't die."

"What did they teach you?" Nate asked, wondering how many others there were.

"All sorts of things. I can run really fast, I can climb up a pole, the things I can do with my body are really cool! They also taught me how to shoot a gun, and I was starting to learn about how to fight Spartans. Like you're the bad guys or something."

Nate's stomach dropped to his boots. So _this_ was what the rebels were planning. _This_ was what Aleksandr Romanov was so smug about.

"But you're not bad, are you? I mean if you were bad you wouldn't be this… _nice_."

Nate shrugged. "Everyone's done things they're not proud of."

"There were only a few of us," Tory said. "Me and Amy, we're the only ones left. Amy's five, and she's new. The older kids all disappeared a couple months ago. They never said what happened, but I think they died or something."

"They're trying to create Spartans," Andi said softly. "That must be why they took the former Admiral – if I'm reading this correctly, he had a big part to play in the planning phase of your creation. He didn't do much for the Orion Project, and he was kicked out of ONI when your augmentation killed so many, so he had nothing to do with the other Two-Series Spartans, but you and the team…"

"Shh," Nate said. "I hear something above. We're almost at the surface."

"That sounds like a Pelican," Tory said, surprising Nate. A civilian child should _not_ have been able to hear it… but then, after what he'd just told Nate, was Tory really a civilian? Suddenly, Nate wasn't so sure.

* * *

**AN: blahhh not happy with this chapter at all. But at least it finally gives context to the prologue. Meet the ally in the unexpected place - Tory might be only nine but he's not your average nine year old child!**

**As always please review!**

**Halo isn't mine, characters and storyline are.**


	28. Ch 27

The bright sunlight was beginning to fade when Nate finally dragged himself – Tory still on his back – out of the shaft. For a few long moments he lay utterly still, listening for any signs of rebel soldiers. Other than the usual sounds of life – birds, or at least bird-like creatures, among other things – the silence was as complete as it had been down in the tunnels.

Finally, with a soft groan he couldn't quite stifle, he stumbled to his feet, briefly assessing Tory's wounds.

Some of the injuries weren't consistent with a fall. Nate was no medic but he knew enough to tell that much. There were very recent bruises and abrasions, and a couple of splits in the kid's skin where he'd been hit so hard his skin couldn't hold on.

"Anything broken? Can you walk?" he asked, watching Tory straighten indignantly.

"Of course I can walk!"

"Is anything broken?" Nate repeated.

"Yeah, but-."

"No buts. I haven't got anything to splint broken bones with so you're going to have to put up with me carrying you." Nate checked his weapons. Sniper and assault rifles were both still full from when he'd paused in the tunnels to resupply from a rebel ammunition crate. Pistol was nearly empty and he didn't have a spare clip.

"Respectfully, Commander, I don't think you _can_ carry me." Tory spoke matter-of-factly with a tone of voice that reminded Nate of Lin. "You barely have the strength left to stand."

"Four or five days of constant running will do that to a soldier," Nate said ruefully. "Good job I'm too stubborn to go down. Come on, let's get moving. The sooner we get out of this forest, the sooner we get evac."

"Okay," Tory said, setting off slowly with a short and careful stride. The stride a Spartan with broken legs would use. Any normal human would be too busy writhing in pain to be able to walk.

Nate willingly matched the kid's pace, wondering how he should categorize Tory when he called for dustoff. He sure as hell wasn't a civilian. He held himself like a soldier. He had the pain threshold of a Spartan, and the ears to go with it. Nate realized he hadn't asked the kid whether the rebels had augmented him. That, he thought, was a question that could probably wait.

The two walked, eight-foot-tall Nate and four-foot-tall Tory, until Nate couldn't feel any of his lower body and Tory was whimpering in pain with every step he took.

"I'm numb," Nate declared, "and you need to rest. I'll get Andi to contact my CO and inform him of the situation… maybe they'll send a Warthog. A skilled driver can get one through here without sacrificing much speed."

"Why didn't you say so earlier?" Tory stopped, turned, and glared at Nate with a reproachful expression that had Nate controlling an urge to laugh. The expression was just so out of place on such a young face.

"It wasn't true earlier. The forest was too thick. I forget you don't know that I know this area back to front and upside-down. Where most would see a bunch of random trees, I see landmarks. That fallen log over there? I took cover under it so many times, from when I was about your age to when my training finished, my sniper rifle's muzzle poked through a woodpecker hole, relying on my ears and my sense for the weapon to find my targets. This place holds so many memories."

"Is that why the rebels took the planet?"

"I don't know," Nate said honestly. "I can't guess at the motivations behind them wanting Haven so badly. There are so many other planets they could have targeted, with facilities just as impressive and easily defended, just as close to major shipping highways… so why this particular planet? It's changed hands eight times, counting this time, since my Spartans and I were last here. The rebels took it, we took it back, and so on."

"Sir?"

"Yes?"

"Can I join the UNSC? Can I be an actual real proper Spartan?"

Nate couldn't help but smile. This kid was so like the civilian children he'd had to deal with in the past, but enough like a Spartan that he felt comfortable showing his softer side. "That's not down to me. I'll talk to my CO, I'll put in a good word for you with ONI, but beyond that it's out of my hands."

"Thank you, sir."

Tory sat down, his back to a tree. Nate followed suit, watching the boy's eyes flick from place to place with all the vigilance of a seasoned veteran but less than half of the steel. That could only come from years of combat experience. Nate remembered looking in the mirror after his first kill and being surprised at how it had hardened his expression.

"Get some rest," Nate said. "I'll take the first watch."

"No, sir," said Tory. "You need it more."

"Sleep, damn it," Nate growled. "I hear combat in the distance. I won't be able to close my eyes until I'm with my team in a place I know is safe."

_-DEVASTATION-_

"I've been tracking him for a while," said Christopher. "Andromeda has been in contact. I sent a Pelican, but they're in thick forest. A skilled driver can get a Warthog through but there's no room for a Pelican. The pilot will set down at the nearest LZ and the Warthog crew that he is carrying will drive the rest of the way."

"Do they have the data?" Anderson demanded, wanting to know the status of the mission.

"No. The child was the priority. He is injured and the tunnels are unstable – not safe for anybody, much less an injured child."

"Which child?"

"The nine-year-old boy. Salvatore Bellini."

"One of the civilians?"

"According to Andromeda this one is hardly a civilian! He shows every single trait of a young Spartan."

"Augmented?"

"So Andi believes. He's rather young for it, but the Insurrection never has had much in the way of morals. The younger it's done, the less likely their bodies are to reject the augmentations – especially the implants – and the cheaper it is. Unfortunately the younger they are, the higher the chances are of losing them in the process."

"Inform the other seven Spartans that they are now only looking to rescue six civilians. One has already been freed."

"Already done, sir. I also warned them to be cautious, as I have reason to believe the young adults may be heavily rebel-indoctrinated and may be… successful prototypes."

Anderson hissed a string of expletives under his breath. The last thing he wanted was for his Spartans to be fighting other Spartans – rebel or not, that would test their loyalties and he wasn't quite confident that he really had Angel Team's hearts. Especially after BLITZKRIEG. Angel Leader seemed distinctly unimpressed with him after that fiasco.

A chill ran down his spine as he remembered the last rebel propaganda release. _You have seen nothing of our power. You have seen nothing of the force the Liberation Front can muster. The Oppressors will not know where, when, or how… but I warn the UNSC, get ready, for we outmatch you on all counts!_

If Christopher was right, the UNSC was making a big mistake by ignoring the rebellion's propaganda machine. Sooner or later the people would realize what Aleksandr Romanov really meant, and the most frightening part? People rallied behind Spartans. The Spartans were the only ones who could really stand up to the Covenant.

"Those damn Innies can't be allowed to create a generation of Spartans, Christopher," Anderson growled. "Inform ONI. See what they think of repurposing my Spartans to hunting down and destroying every last one of the Spartans that the rebels have created."

"And of the group they are working to rescue?"

"Order them to kill anything hostile. The old man dies too. Try to save the children if possible. ONI might have use for them."

"Confirmed."

_-PLANETSIDE-_

"Easy, Zeke, easy. We don't know what's in there."

"Shh, I'm trying to concentrate," Zeke said, shooting a sharp glance at Leo. Despite the mirrored faceplate, his disapproval was more than clear. "There's a _reason_ we're not just blowing the door with your C12!"

"Stow it," Eli growled. "I know you guys don't know each other very well, but I expect professionalism. Leo, Zeke outranks you, don't go giving him orders. Zeke, don't rise to the bait. Leo is not Raph."

"Sorry, sir," both Spartans said in perfect unison. Leo tilted his head to one side, body language indicating he was grinning.

"Weapons hot," Zeke warned. "I've almost got it. Hold on… Yeah, got it. We're in."

"Not a door in the universe that can keep our Zeke out," Lin said, allowing a little pride into her voice. Her statement was punctuated by the subtly threatening sound of seven safeties clicking off. The door chimed, then slid open.

Eli instantly defaulted to hand signals, took point, and ordered them all into formation behind him. All seven slipped silently through the door.

"Watch yourselves," Eli said aloud. "Remember what Christopher told us. It's possible we might come up against the rebel equivalent of Spartans. They'll have the same tactics as us, and I'm willing to bet they have anti-Spartan training. Stay frosty."

"Sir," the other six agreed quietly.

"Hold your fire until either we are fired upon, or I give the order."

"Yes, sir!"

"Now let's move."

_-FOREST-_

Nate was drifting. He was still awake, but not by much. Tory was curled up on his lap, which had to be uncomfortable, but was probably the safest-feeling place given that the sounds of combat were getting closer. He was so exhausted, he felt a little delirious, but he couldn't bring himself to wake the child to take the next watch.

He let his imagination take him back to the time when he was not much older than Tory, 'playing' war games with the other Angel cadets as his allies and the DIs as the enemy. Back when there were still sixty Spartan cadets in the Angel S-II Prototype program.

_They had all been so young, so innocent. Nate could hear the heckling and laughter – even a quiet snort from ten-year-old Eli – as the cadets set up a defensive position in a bunker that was now nothing more than a crumbling ruin, reclaimed by the forest._

_They all fell silent at the faint sound of a Warthog. The trainers – the 'enemy' soldiers – were patrolling, searching for them. Sooner or later the 'enemy' would discover their presence in the bunker. Nate prowled from one end of the bunker to the other and back again, occasionally yelling an order at a disorganized cadet. The eleven others he had managed to gather were all capable young soldiers, and each was armed with his or her favored weapon. That gave them the upper hand, unless the enemy stormed them with enough troops to overwhelm the fireteam._

_He had 'his' team of six – himself, Eli, Lin, Cas, Raph and Zeke – with whom he shared a dorm in the barracks. The other six were equally promising. Azrael and Israel – Az and Iz – close quarters and sniping respectively, were crouched near a gun turret, heads together, quietly discussing whose approach was more likely to get him 'killed'. Emmanuel was almost as tall as Cas, but all long and lanky where Cas was already quite solid, with skin as black as his cornrows and a spooky ability to disappear into almost any shadow._

_The perfectly average, nondescript face and body of the gunner on the turret belied a certain lethality that concerned even Nate. Camael was quiet, brooding and deadly. He was the only one out of all of them – all sixty – who had actually killed someone. Nobody had actually seen it happen, but the rumors flew as thick as stun rounds in a firefight._

_Ellie was nearest the only entrance, a stun grenade in each hand. Both were primed already; all Elemiah had to do was throw them. She was already proven as an excellent demolition expert and had a calmness about her that really came to the forefront in tense situations. She was leaning against the wall, casual as anything, and it wasn't an act. It was just Ellie._

_Last but not least, Lailah, who stood next to Eli, watching the entrance with the steely-eyed glare of a seasoned sniper. Nate's fireteam had a total of three snipers, one scout, two close-quarters experts, one tech, a medic, two explosives experts, a support weapons expert, and Cam, who nobody was quite sure of. Cam didn't seem to have a preference._

_"Here they come," said Zeke, who was crouched next to something Nate couldn't identify. Zeke pressed a button and suddenly the TACMAP readout in their helmets showed the positions of a whole battlegroup of 'enemy' soldiers moving in on their position._

_"Hold position," Nate ordered. "That entrance is going to choke them down to one or two at a time. They can't overwhelm us with the numbers they have. Zeke, try to contact the others, I don't want any soldier left behind. If we can coordinate another fireteam – or better, the other _four_ fireteams – we can get men behind them and surround them. Easy pickings from there."_

_"Sir! Yes, sir!"_

_"Eyes open, watch their tactics, _learn_ from them! They are all capable soldiers proven on the battlefield and have trained for situations like this one. I want you all to take note of what works and what doesn't. If we win this thing today, then tomorrow, make no mistake, we'll be in their shoes."_

_Nate stopped moving and settled himself into position behind one of the sandbag barricades. He ordered silence with a sweeping hand gesture and shouldered his sniper rifle, opting instead for an MA5K assault rifle. Flicking off the safety, he double-checked that there was a round in the barrel._

_Ellie straightened a tiny bit, then lobbed both her grenades and retreated to cover with the rest of the cadets. It was on._

Most of the others had died during augmentation three years after that war game. Nate remembered feeling like a failure because he'd lost so many of his troops in one fell swoop. Iz had disappeared, he and his team had made it to full combat ready status, but the others were all dead.

Being on Haven was difficult and wonderful all at once because it brought back memories of people Nate had tried hard to forget. He wasn't always the moody, bad-tempered, hyper-rational ass. It was his failure to keep his people alive – ninety percent of them were either dead or missing – that had changed him.

The sound of a Warthog met his ears. For a moment Nate thought he was still lost in memories, but then Tory stirred. The boy stared at Nate's faceplate for a long moment. Nate could have sworn the kid was looking into his soul.

When Tory finally looked away, Nate gently pushed the boy off his lap and got to his feet, then crouched and picked him up. Tory's face was drawn and wan, and briefly it scrunched up into a grimace of pain.

"I can walk," Tory said.

"No you can't."

* * *

**AN: Memoriessss! Most of those names are incidental fluff but if you've been paying attention you'll recognize one of them, and if you've been participating in/have read the RP [again if you're interested PM me your email address and I'll email you a link] you'll recognize another. I ****_might_**** really badly want to develop Camael more, I think he'd be fun, but he's meant to be dead, which kind of puts a dampener on that plan.**

**Poor Nate is just... absolutely stuffed. Wouldn't you be after four/five days with no sleep, running/climbing/saving people the whole time?**

**OFFICIALLY just broke the 70k words mark! Pretty excited about that. 70k words, 27 chapters, and [not typeset as for a book] 183 pages. /proud.**

**Please review! I can't improve without your help.**

**Halo isn't mine, characters and storyline are.**


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